Engineering Ethics Paper (Philosophy - Utilitarianism)
AN
INTRODUCTION
TO THE
PRINCIPLES
OF
MORALS
AND
LEGISLATION
by
Jeremy Bentham
1781
CHAPTER I.
OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY.
I. 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[1] 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.
II. 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[2] of utility is meant that
principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever.
according to the tendency 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.
III. 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.
IV. 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 is it? -- the sum of the interests of the several members who compose
it.
V. It is in vain to talk of the interest of the community, without
understanding what is the interest[3] 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.
VI. An action then may be said to be conformable to then 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.
VII. 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.
VIII. 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.
IX. A man may be said to be a partizan 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.
X. 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.
XI. Has the rectitude of this principle been ever formally contested? It
should seem that it had, by those who have not known what they have been
meaning. Is it susceptible of any direct proof? it should seem not: for that
which is used to prove every thing else, cannot itself be proved: a chain of
proofs must have their commencement somewhere. To give such proof is as
impossible as it is needless.
XII. Not that there is or ever has been that human creature at breathing,
however stupid or perverse, who has not on many, perhaps on most occasions
of his life, deferred to it. By the natural constitution of the human frame,
on most occasions of their lives men in general embrace this principle,
without thinking of it: if not for the ordering of their own actions, yet
for the trying of their own actions, as well as of those of other men. There
have been, at the same time, not many perhaps, even of the most intelligent,
who have been disposed to embrace it purely and without reserve. There are
even few who have not taken some occasion or other to quarrel with it,
either on account of their not understanding always how to apply it, or on
account of some prejudice or other which they were afraid to examine into,
or could not bear to part with. For such is the stuff that man is made of:
in principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the
rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
XIII. When a man attempts to combat the principle of utility, it is with
reasons drawn, without his being aware of it, from that very principle
itself.[4] His arguments, if they prove any thing, prove not that the
principle is wrong, but that, according to the applications he supposes to
be made of it, it is misapplied. Is it possible for a man to move the earth?
Yes; but he must first find out another earth to stand upon.
XIV. To disprove the propriety of it by arguments is impossible; but, from
the causes that have been mentioned, or from some confused or partial view
of it, a man may happen to be disposed not to relish it. Where this is the
case, if he thinks the settling of his opinions on such a subject worth the
trouble, let him take the following steps, and at length, perhaps, he may
come to reconcile himself to it.
1. Let him settle with himself, whether he would wish to discard this
principle altogether; if so, let him consider what it is that all his
reasonings (in matters of politics especially) can amount to?
2. If he would, let him settle with himself, whether he would judge and act
without any principle, or whether there is any other he would judge an act
by?
3. If there be, let him examine and satisfy himself whether the principle he
thinks he has found is really any separate intelligible principle; or
whether it be not a mere principle in words, a kind of phrase, which at
bottom expresses neither more nor less than the mere averment of his own
unfounded sentiments; that is, what in another person he might be apt to
call caprice?
4. If he is inclined to think that his own approbation or disapprobation,
annexed to the idea of an act, without any regard to its consequences, is a
sufficient foundation for him to judge and act upon, let him ask himself
whether his sentiment is to be a standard of right and wrong, with respect
to every other man, or whether every man's sentiment has the same privilege
of being a standard to itself?
5. In the first case, let him ask himself whether his principle is not
despotical, and hostile to all the rest of human race?
6. In the second case, whether it is not anarchial, and whether at this rate
there are not as many different standards of right and wrong as there are
men? and whether even to the same man, the same thing, which is right
to-day, may not (without the least change in its nature) be wrong to-morrow?
and whether the same thing is not right and wrong in the same place at the
same time? and in either case, whether all argument is not at an end? and
whether, when two men have said, "I like this", and "I don't like it", they
can (upon such a principle) have any thing more to say?
7. If he should have said to himself, No: for that the sentiment which he
proposes as a standard must be grounded on reflection, let him say on what
particulars the reflection is to turn? if on particulars having relation to
the utility of the act, then let him say whether this is not deserting his
own principle, and borrowing assistance from that very one in opposition to
which he sets it up: or if not on those particulars, on what other
particulars?
8. If he should be for compounding the matter, and adopting his own
principle in part, and the principle of utility in part, let him say how far
he will adopt it?
9. When he has settled with himself where he will stop, then let him ask
himself how he justifies to himself the adopting it so far? and why he will
not adopt it any farther?
10. Admitting any other principle than the principle of utility to be a
right principle, a principle that it is right for a man to pursue; admitting
(what is not true) that the word right can have a meaning without reference
to utility, let him say whether there is any such thing as a motive that a
man can have to pursue the dictates of it: if there is, let him say what
that motive is, and how it is to be distinguished from those which enforce
the dictates of utility: if not, then lastly let him say what it is this
other principle can be good for?
1. Note by the Author, July 1822.
To this denomination has of late been added, or substituted, the greatest
happiness or greatest felicity principle: this for shortness, instead of
saying at length that principle which states the greatest happiness of all
those whose interest is in question, as being the right and proper, and only
right and proper and universally desirable, end of human action: of human
action in every situation, and in particular in that of a functionary or set
of functionaries exercising the powers of Government. The word utility does
not so clearly point to the ideas of pleasure and pain as the words
happiness and felicity do: nor does it lead us to the consideration of the
number, of the interests affected; to the number, as being the circumstance,
which contributes, in the largest proportion, to the formation of the
standard here in question; the standard of right and wrong, by which alone
the propriety of human conduct, in every situation, can with propriety be
tried. This want of a sufficiently manifest connexion between the ideas of
happiness and pleasure on the one hand, and the idea of utility on the
other, I have every now and then found operating, and with but too much
efficiency, as a bar to the acceptance, that might otherwise have been
given, to this principle.
2. The word principle is derived from the Latin principium: which seems to
be compounded of the two words primus, first, or chief, and cipium a
termination which seems to be derived from capio, to take, as in mancipium,
municipium; to which are analogous, auceps, forceps, and others. It is a
term of very vague and very extensive signification: it is applied to any
thing which is conceived to serve as a foundation or beginning to any series
of operations: in some cases, of physical operations; but of mental
operations in the present case.
The principle here in question may be taken for an act of the mind; a
sentiment; a sentiment of approbation; a sentiment which, when applied to an
action, approves of its utility, as that quality of it by which the measure
of approbation or disapprobation bestowed upon it ought to be governed.
3. Interest is one of those words, which not having any superior genus,
cannot in the ordinary way be defined.
4. "The principle of utility, (I have heard it said) is a dangerous
principle: it is dangerous on certain occasions to consult it." This is as
much as to say, what? that it is not consonant to utility, to consult
utility: in short, that it is not consulting it, to consult it.
Addition by the Author, July 1822.
Not long after the publication of the Fragment on Government, anno 1776, in
which, in the character of all-comprehensive and all-commanding principle
the principle of utility was brought to view, one person by whom observation
to the above effect was made was Alexander Wedderburn, at that time Attorney
or Solicitor General, afterwards successively Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas, and Chancellor of England, under the successive titles of Lord
Loughborough and Earl of Rosslyn. It was made -- not indeed in my hearing,
but in the hearing of a person by whom it was almost immediately
communicated to me. So far from being self-contradictory, it was a shrewd
and perfectly true one. By that distinguished functionary, the state of the
Government was thoroughly understood: by the obscure individual, at that
time not so much as supposed to be so: his disquisitions had not been as yet
applied, with any thing like a comprehensive view, to the field of
Constitutional Law, nor therefore to those features of the English
Government, by which the greatest happiness of the ruling one with or
without that of a favoured few, are now so plainly seen to be the only ends
to which the course of it has at any time been directed. The principle of
utility was an appellative, at that time employed by me, as it had been by
others, to designate that which, in a more perspicuous and instructive
manner, may, as above, be designated by the name of the greatest happiness
principle. "This principle (said Wedderburn) is a dangerous one." Saying so,
he said that which, to a certain extent, is strictly true: a principle,
which lays down, as the only right and justifiable end of Government, the
greatest happiness of the greatest number -- how can it be denied to be a
dangerous one? dangerous it unquestionably is, to every government which has
for its actual end or object, the greatest happiness of a certain one, with
or without the addition of some comparatively small number of others, whom
it is matter of pleasure or accommodation to him to admit, each of them, to
a share in the concern, on the footing of so many junior partners. Dangerous
it therefore really was, to the interest -- the sinister interest -- of all
those functionaries, himself included, whose interest it was, to maximize
delay, vexation, and expense, in judicial and other modes of procedure, for
the sake of the profit, extractible out of the expense. In a Government
which had for its end in view the greatest happiness of the greatest number,
Alexander Wedderburn might have been Attorney General and then Chancellor:
but he would not have been Attorney General with £15,000 a year, nor
Chancellor, with a peerage with a veto upon all justice, with £25,000 a
year, and with 500 sinecures at his disposal, under the name of
Ecclesiastical Benefices, besides et cæteras.
CHAPTER II.
OF PRINCIPLES ADVERSE TO THAT OF UTILITY.
I. If the principle of utility be a right principle to be governed by, and
that in all cases, it follows from what has been just observed, that
whatever principle differs from it in any case must necessarily be a wrong
one. To prove any other principle, therefore, to be a wrong one, there needs
no more than just to show it to be what it is, a principle of which the
dictates are in some point or other different from those of the principle of
utility: to state it is to confute it.
II. A principle may be different from that of utility in two ways: 1. By
being constantly opposed to it: this is the case with a principle which may
be termed the principle of asceticism.[1] 2. By being sometimes opposed to
it, and sometimes not, as it may happen: this is the case with another,
which may be termed the principle of sympathy and antipathy.
III. By the principle of asceticism I mean that principle, which, like the
principle of utility, approves or disapproves of any action, according to
the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness
of the party whose interest is in question; but in an inverse manner:
approving of actions in as far as they tend to diminish his happiness;
disapproving of them in as far as they tend to augment it.
IV. It is evident that any one who reprobates any the least particle of
pleasure, as such, from whatever source derived, is pro tanto a partizan of
the principle of asceticism. It is only upon that principles and not from
the principle of utility, that the most abominable pleasure which the vilest
of malefactors ever reaped from his crime would be to be reprobated, if it
stood alone. The case is, that it never does stand alone; but is necessarily
followed by such a quantity of pain (or, what comes to the same thing, such
a chance for a certain quantity of pain) that, the pleasure in comparison of
it, is as nothing: and this is the true and sole, but perfectly sufficient,
reason for making it a ground for punishment.
V. There are two classes of men of very different complexions, by whom the
principle of asceticism appears to have been embraced; the one a set of
moralists, the other a set of religionists. Different accordingly have been
the motives which appears to have recommended it to the notice of these
different parties. Hope, that is the prospect of pleasure, seems to have
animated the former: hope, the aliment of philosophic pride: the hope of
honour and reputation at the hands of men. Fear, that is the prospect of
pain, the latter: fear, the offspring of superstitious fancy: the fear of
future punishment at the hands of a splenetic and revengeful Deity. I say in
this case fear: for of the invisible future, fear is more powerful than
hope. These circumstances characterize the two different parties among the
partisans of the principle of asceticism; the parties and their motives
different, the principle the same.
VI. The religious party, however, appear to have carried it farther than the
philosophical: they have acted more consistently and less wisely. The
philosophical party have scarcely gone farther than to reprobate pleasure:
the religious party have frequently gone so far as to make it a matter of
merit and of duty to court pain. The philosophical party have hardly gone
farther than the making pain a matter of indifference. It is no evil, they
have said: they have not said, it is a good. They have not so much as
reprobated all pleasure in the lump. They have discarded only what they have
called the gross; that is, such as are organical, or of which the origin is
easily traced up to such as are organical: they have even cherished and
magnified the refined. Yet this, however, not under the name of pleasure: to
cleanse itself from the sordes of its impure original, it was necessary it
should change its name: the honourable, the glorious, the reputable, the
becoming, the honestum, the decorum it was to be called: in short, any thing
but pleasure.
VII. From these two sources have flowed the doctrines from it which the
sentiments of the bulk of mankind have all along received a tincture of this
principle; some from the philosophical, some from the religious, some from
both. Men of education more frequently from the philosophical, as more
suited to the elevation of their sentiments: the vulgar more frequently from
the superstitious, as more suited to the narrowness of their intellect,
undilated by knowledge and to the abjectness of their condition, continually
open to the attacks of fear. The tinctures, however, derived from the two
sources, would naturally intermingle, insomuch that a man would not always
know by which of them he was most influenced: and they would often serve to
corroborate and enliven one another. It was this conformity that made a kind
of alliance between parties of a complexion otherwise so dissimilar: and
disposed them to unite upon various occasions against the common enemy, the
partizan of the principle of utility, whom they joined in branding with the
odious name of Epicurean.
VIII. The principle of asceticism, however, with whatever warmth it may have
been embraced by its partizans as a rule of Private conduct, seems not to
have been carried to any considerable length, when applied to the business
of government. In a few instances it has been carried a little way by the
philosophical party: witness the Spartan regimen. Though then, perhaps, it
maybe considered as having been a measure of security: and an application,
though a precipitate and perverse application, of the principle of utility.
Scarcely in any instances, to any considerable length, by the religious: for
the various monastic orders, and the societies of the Quakers, Dumplers,
Moravians, and other religionists, have been free societies, whose regimen
no man has been astricted to without the intervention of his own consent.
Whatever merit a man may have thought there would be in making himself
miserable, no such notion seems ever to have occurred to any of them, that
it may be a merit, much less a duty, to make others miserable: although it
should seem, that if a certain quantity of misery were a thing so desirable,
it would not matter much whether it were brought by each man upon himself,
or by one man upon another. It is true, that from the same source from
whence, among the religionists, the attachment to the principle of
asceticism took its rise, flowed other doctrines and practices, from which
misery in abundance was produced in one man by the instrumentality of
another: witness the holy wars, and the persecutions for religion. But the
passion for producing misery in these cases proceeded upon some special
ground: the exercise of it was confined to persons of particular
descriptions: they were tormented, not as men, but as heretics and infidels.
To have inflicted the same miseries on their fellow believers and
fellow-sectaries, would have been as blameable in the eyes even of these
religionists, as in those of a partizan of the principle of utility. For a
man to give himself a certain number of stripes was indeed meritorious: but
to give the same number of stripes to another man, not consenting, would
have been a sin. We read of saints, who for the good of their souls, and the
mortification of their bodies, have voluntarily yielded themselves a prey to
vermin: but though many persons of this class have wielded the reins of
empire, we read of none who have set themselves to work, and made laws on
purpose, with a view of stocking the body politic with the breed of
highwaymen, housebreakers, or incendiaries. If at any time they have
suffered the nation to be preyed upon by swarms of idle pensioners, or
useless placemen, it has rather been from negligence and imbecility, than
from any settled plan for oppressing and plundering of the people. If at any
time they have sapped the sources of national wealth, by cramping commerce,
and driving the inhabitants into emigration, it has been with other views,
and in pursuit of other ends. If they have declaimed against the pursuit of
pleasure, and the use of wealth, they have commonly stopped at declamation:
they have not, like Lycurgus, made express ordinances for the purpose of
banishing the precious metals. If they have established idleness by a law,
it has been not because idleness, the mother of vice and misery, is itself a
virtue, but because idleness (say they) is the road to holiness. If under
the notion of fasting, they have joined in the plan of confining their
subjects to a diet, thought by some to be of the most nourishing and
prolific nature, it has been not for the sake of making them tributaries to
the nations by whom that diet was to be supplied, but for the sake of
manifesting their own power, and exercising the obedience of the people. If
they have established, or suffered to be established, punishments for the
breach of celibacy, they have done no more than comply with the petitions of
those deluded rigorists, who, dupes to the ambitious and deep-laid policy of
their rulers, first laid themselves under that idle obligation by a vow.
IX. The principle of asceticism seems originally to have been the reverie
of certain hasty speculators, who having perceived, or fancied, that
certain pleasures, when reaped in certain circumstances, have, at the
long run, been attended with pains more than equivalent to them, took
occasion to quarrel with every thing that offered itself under the name of
pleasure. Having then got thus far, and having forgot the point which
they set out from, they pushed on, and went so much further as to think
it meritorious to fall in love with pain. Even this, we see, is at bottom but
the principle of utility misapplied.
X. The principle of utility is capable of being consistently pursued; and it
is but tautology to say, that the more consistently it is pursued, the
better it must ever be for human-kind. The principle of asceticism never
was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but
one tenth part of the inhabitants of this earth pursue it consistently, and
in a day's time they will have turned it into a hell.
XI. Among principles adverse to that of utility, that which at this day
seems to have most influence in matters of government, is what may be called
the principle of sympathy and antipathy.[2] By the principle of sympathy and
antipathy, I mean that principle which approves or disapproves of certain
actions, not on account of their tending to augment the happiness, nor yet
on account of their tending to diminish the happiness of the party whose
interest is in question, but merely because a man finds himself disposed to
approve or disapprove of them: holding up that approbation or disapprobation
as a sufficient reason for itself, and disclaiming the necessity of looking
out for any extrinsic ground. Thus far in the general department of morals:
and in the particular department of politics, measuring out the quantum (as
well as determining the ground) of punishment, by the degree of the
disapprobation.
XII. It is manifest, that this is rather a principle in name than in
reality: it is not a positive principle of itself, so much as a term
employed to signify the negation of all principle. What one expects to find
in a principle is something that points out some external consideration, as
a means of warranting and guiding the internal sentiments of approbation and
disapprobation: this expectation is but ill fulfilled by a proposition,
which does neither more nor less than hold up each of those sentiments as a
ground and standard for itself.
XIII. In looking over the catalogue of human actions (says a partizan of
this principle) in order to determine which of them are to be marked with
the seal of disapprobation, you need but to take counsel of your own
feelings: whatever you find in yourself a propensity to condemn, is wrong
for that very reason. For the same reason it is also meet for punishment: in
what proportion it is adverse to utility, or whether it be adverse to
utility at all, is a matter that makes no difference. In that same
proportion also is it meet for punishment: if you hate much, punish much: if
you hate little, punish little: punish as you hate. If you hate not at all,
punish not at all: the fine feelings of the soul are not to be overborne and
tyrannized by the harsh and rugged dictates of political utility.
XIV. The various systems that have been formed concerning the standard of
right may all be reduced to the principle of sympathy and antipathy. One
account may serve to for all of them. They consist all of them in so many
contrivances for avoiding the obligation of appealing to any external
standard, and for prevailing upon the reader to accept of the author's
sentiment or opinion as a reason for itself.[3] The phrases different, but
the principle the same.
XV. It is manifest, that the dictates of this principle will frequently
coincide with those of utility, though perhaps without intending any such
thing. Probably more frequently than not: and hence it is that the business
of penal justice is carried upon that tolerable sort of footing upon which
we see it carried on in common at this day. For what more natural or more
general ground of hatred to a practice can there be, than the
mischievousness of such practice? What all men are exposed to suffer by, all
men will be disposed to hate. It is far yet, however, from being a constant
ground: for when a man suffers, it is not always that he knows what it is he
suffers by. A man may suffer grievously, for instance, by a new tax, without
being able to trace up the cause of his sufferings to the injustice of some
neighbour, who has eluded the payment of an old one.
XVI. The principle of sympathy and antipathy is most apt to err on the side
of severity. It is for applying punishment in many cases which deserve none:
in many cases which deserve some, it is for applying more than they deserve.
There is no incident imaginable, be it ever so trivial, and so remote from
mischief, from which this principle may not extract a ground of punishment.
Any difference in taste: any difference in opinion: upon one subject as well
as upon another. No disagreement so trifling which perseverance and
altercation will not render serious. Each becomes in the other's eyes an
enemy, and, if laws permit, a criminal.[4] This is one of the circumstances
by which the human race is distinguished (not much indeed to its advantage)
from the brute creation.
XVII. It is not, however, by any means unexampled for this principle to err
on the side of lenity. A near and perceptible mischief moves antipathy. A
remote and imperceptible mischief, though not less real, has no effect.
Instances in proof of this will occur in numbers in the course of the
work.[5] It would be breaking in upon the order of it to give them here.
XVIII. It may be wondered, perhaps, that in all this no mention has been
made of the theological principle; meaning that principal which professes to
recur for the standard of right and wrong to the will of God. But the case
is, this is not in fact a distinct principle. It is never any thing more or
less than one or other of the three before-mentioned principles presenting
itself under another shape. The will of God here meant cannot be his
revealed will, as contained in the sacred writings: for that is a system
which nobody ever thinks of recurring to at this time of day, for the
details of political administration: and even before it can be applied to
the details of private conduct, it is universally allowed, by the most
eminent divines of all persuasions, to stand in need of pretty ample
interpretations; else to what use are the works of those divines? And for
the guidance of these interpretations, it is also allowed, that some other
standard must be assumed. The will then which is meant on this occasion, is
that which may be called the presumptive will: that is to say, that which is
presumed to be his will by virtue of the conformity of its dictates to those
of some other principle. What then may be this other principle? it must be
one or other of the three mentioned above: for there cannot, as we have
seen, be any more. It is plain, therefore, that, setting revelation out of
the question, no light can ever be thrown upon the standard of right and
wrong, by any thing that can be said upon the question, what is God's will.
We may be perfectly sure, indeed, that whatever is right is conformable to
the will of God: but so far is that from answering the purpose of showing us
what is right, that it is necessary to know first whether a thing is right,
in order to know from thence whether it be conformable to the will of
God.[6]
XIX. There are two things which are very apt to be confounded, but which it
imports us carefully to distinguish: -- the motive or cause, which, by
operating on the mind of an individual, is productive of any act: and the
ground or reason which warrants a legislator, or other by-stander, in
regarding that act with an eye of approbation. When the act happens, in the
particular instance in question, to be productive of effects which we
approve of, much more if we happen to observe that the same motive may
frequently be productive, in other instances, of the like effects, we are
apt to transfer our approbation to the motive itself, and to assume, as the
just ground for the approbation we bestow on the act, the circumstance of
its originating from that motive. It is in this way that the sentiment of
antipathy has often been considered as a just ground of action. Antipathy,
for instance, in such or such a case, is the cause of an action which is
attended with good effects: but this does not make it a right ground of
action in that case, any more than in any other. Still farther. Not only the
effects are good, but the agent sees beforehand that they will be so. This
may make the action indeed a perfectly right action: but it does not make
antipathy a right ground of action. For the same sentiment of antipathy, if
implicitly deferred to, may be, and very frequently is, productive of the
very worst effects. Antipathy, therefore, can never be a right ground of
action. No more, therefore, can resentment, which, as will be seen more
particularly hereafter, is but a modification of antipathy. The only right
ground of action, that can possibly subsist, is, after all, the
consideration of utility which, if it is a right principle of actions and of
approbation any one case, is so in every other. Other principles in
abundance, that is, other motives, may be the reasons why such and such an
act has been done: that is, the reasons or causes of its being done: but it
is this alone that can be the reason why it might or ought to have been
done. Antipathy or resentment requires always to be regulated, to prevent it
doing mischief: to be regulated what? always by the principle of utility.
The principle of utility neither requires nor admits of any another
regulator than itself.
1. Ascetic is a term that has been sometimes applied to Monks. It comes from
a Greek word which signifies exercise. The practices by which Monks sought
to distinguish themselves from other men were called their Exercises. These
exercises consisted in so many contrivances they had for tormenting
themselves. By this they thought to ingratiate themselves with the Deity.
For the Deity. said they, is a Being of infinite benevolence: now a Being of
the most ordinary benevolence is pleased to see others make themselves as
happy as they can: therefore to make ourselves as unhappy as we can is the
way to please the Deity. If any body asked them, what motive they could find
for doing all this? Oh! said they, you are not to imagine that we are
punishing ourselves for nothing: we know very well what we are about. You
are to know, that for every grain of pain it costs us now, we are to have a
hundred grains of pleasure by and by. The case is, that God loves to see us
torment ourselves at present: indeed he has as good as told us so. But this
is done only to try us, in order just to see how we should behave: which it
is plain he could not know, without making the experiment. Now then, from
the satisfaction it gives him to see us make ourselves as unhappy as we can
make ourselves in this present life, we have a sure proof of the
satisfaction it will give him to see us as happy as he can make us in a life
to come.
2. The following Note was first printed in January 1789.
It ought rather to have been styled, more extensively, the principle of
caprice. Where it applies to the choice of actions to be marked out for
injunction or prohibition, for reward or punishment, (to stand, in a word,
as subjects for obligations to be imposed,) it may indeed with propriety be
termed, as in the text, the principle of sympathy and antipathy. But this
appellative does not so well apply to it, when occupied in the choice of the
events which are to serve as sources of title with respect to rights: where
the actions prohibited and allowed the obligations and rights, being already
fixed, the only question is, under what circumstances a man is to be
invested with the one or subjected to the other? from what incidents
occasion is to be taken to invest a man, or to refuse to invest him, with
the one, or to subject him to the other? In this latter case it may more
appositely be characterized by the name of the phantastic principle.
Sympathy and antipathy are affections of the sensible faculty. But the
choice of titles with respect to rights, especially with respect to
proprietary rights, upon grounds unconnected with utility, has been in many
instances the work not of the affections but of the imagination.
When, in justification of an article of English Common Law calling uncles to
succeed in certain cases in preference to fathers, Lord Coke produced a sort
of ponderosity he had discovered in rights, disqualifying them from
ascending in a straight line, it was not that he loved uncles particularly,
or hated fathers, but because the analogy, such as it was, was what his
imagination presented him with, instead of a reason, and because, to a
judgment unobservant of the standard of utility, or unacquainted with the
art of consulting it, where affection is out of the way, imagination is the
only guide.
When I know not what ingenious grammarian invented the proposition Delegatus
non potest delegare, to serve as a rule of law, it was not surely that he
had any antipathy to delegates of the second order, or that it was any
pleasure to him to think of the ruin which, for want of a manager at home,
may befall the affairs of a traveller whom an unforeseen accident has
deprived of the object of his choice: it was, that the incongruity, of
giving the same law to objects so contrasted as active and passive are, was
not to be surmounted, and that -atus chimes, as well as it contrasts, with
-are.
When that inexorable maxim, (of which the dominion is no more to be defined,
than the date of its birth, or the name of its father, is to be found) was
imported from England for the government of Bengal, and the whole fabric of
judicature was crushed by the thunders of ex post facto justice, it was not
surely that the prospect of a blameless magistracy perishing in prison
afforded any enjoyment to the unoffended authors of their misery; but that
the music of the maxim, absorbing the whole imagination, had drowned the
cries of humanity along with the dictates of common sense.[7] Fiat Justitia,
ruat coelum, says another maxim, as full of extravagance as it is of
harmony: Go heaven to wreck -- so justice be but done: -- and what is the
ruin of kingdoms, in comparison of the wreck of heaven?
So again, when the Prussian chancellor, inspired with the wisdom of I know
not what Roman sage, proclaimed in good Latin, for the edification of German
ears, Servitus servitutis non datur, [Cod. Fred. tom. ii. par. 2. liv. 2.
tit. x. §6. p. 308.] it was not that he had conceded any aversion to the
life-holder who, during the continuance of his term, should wish to gratify
a neighbour with a right of way or water, or to the neighbour who should
wish to accept of the indulgence; but that, to a jurisprudential ear, -tus
-tutis sound little less melodious than -atus -are. Whether the melody of
the maxim was the real reason of the rule, is not left open to dispute for
it is ushered in by the conjunction quia, reason's appointed harbinger quia
servitus servitutis non datur.
Neither would equal melody have been produced, nor indeed could similar
melody have been called for, in either of these instances, by the opposite
provision: it is only when they are opposed to general rules, and not when
by their conformity they are absorbed in them, that more specific ones can
obtain a separate existence. Delegatus potest delegare, and Servitus
servitutis datur, provisions already included under the general adoption of
contracts, would have been as unnecessary to the apprehension and the
memory, as, in comparison of their energetic negatives, they are insipid to
the ear.
Were the inquiry diligently made, it would be found that the goddess of
harmony has exercised more influence, however latent, over the dispensations
of Themis, than her most diligent historiographers, or even her most
passionate panegyrists, seem to have been aware of. Every one knows, how, by
the ministry of Orpheus, it was she who first collected the sons of men
beneath the shadow of the sceptre: yet, in the midst of continual
experience, men seem yet to learn, with what successful diligence she has
laboured to guide it in its course. Every one knows, that measured numbers
were the language of the infancy of law: none seem to have observed with
what imperious sway they have governed her maturer age. In English
jurisprudence in particular, the connexion betwixt law and music, however
less perceived than in Spartan legislation, is not perhaps less real nor
less close. The music of the Office, though not of the same kind, is not
less musical its kind, than the music of the Theatre; that which hardens the
heart, than that which softens it: -- sostenutos as long, cadences as
sonorous; and those governed by rules, though not yet promulgated, not less
determinate. Search indictments, pleadings, proceedings in chancery,
conveyances: whatever trespasses you may find against truth or common sense
you will find none against the laws of harmony. The English Liturgy justly
as this quality has been extolled in that sacred office, possesses not a
greater measure of it, than is commonly to be found in an English Act of
Parliament. Dignity, simplicity, brevity, precision, intelligibility,
possibility of being retained or so much as apprehended, every thing yields
to Harmony. Volumes might be filled, shelves loaded, with the sacrifices
that are made to this insatiate power. Expletives, her ministers in Grecian
poetry are not less busy, though in different shape and bulk, in English
legislation: in the former, they are monosyllables:[8] in the latter, they
are whole lines.[9]
To return to the principle of sympathy and antipathy: a term preferred at
first, on account of its impartiality, to the principle of caprice. The
choice of an appellative, in the above respects too narrow, was owing to my
not having, at that time, extended my views over the civil branch of law,
any otherwise than as I had found it inseparably involved in the penal. But
when we come to the former branch, we shall see the phantastic principle
making at least as great a figure there, as the principle of sympathy and
antipathy in the latter.
In the days of Lord Coke, the light of utility can scarcely be said to have
as yet shone upon the face of Common Law. If a faint ray of it, under the
name of the argumentum ab inconvenienti, is to be found in a list of about
twenty topics exhibited by that great lawyer as the co-ordinate leaders of
that all-perfect system, the admission, so circumstanced, is as sure a proof
of neglect, as, to the statues of Brutus and Cassius, exclusion was a cause
of notice. It stands, neither in the front, nor in the rear, nor in any post
of honour; but huddled in towards the middle, without the smallest mark of
preference. [Coke, Littleton, ii. a.] Nor is this Latin inconvenience by any
means the same thing with the English one. It stands distinguished from
mischief: and because by the vulgar it is taken for something less bad, it
is given by the learned as something worse. The law prefers a mischief to an
inconvenience, says an admired maxim, and the more admired, because as
nothing is expressed by it, the more is supposed to be understood.
Not that there is any avowed, much less a constant opposition, between the
prescriptions of utility and the operations of the common law: such
constancy we have seen to be too much even for ascetic fervor. From time to
time instinct would unavoidably betray them into the paths of reason:
instinct which, however it may be cramped, can never be killed by education.
The cobwebs spun out of the materials brought together by the competition of
opposite analogies, can never have ceased being warped by the silent
attraction of the rational principle: though it should have been, as the
needle is by the magnet, without the privity of conscience.
3. 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 it 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 teaches 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 of the account 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 point 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 that rule of right dictates so
and so: and then he begins giving you his sentiments upon
any thing 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's 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 any thing more than phrases:
they insist but feebly upon the 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 standard,
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
any thing 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 any thing 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 to 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 practicing 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.
10. It is upon the principle of antipathy that such and such
acts are often reprobated on the score of their being
unnatural: the practice of exposing children, established
among the Greeks and Romans, was an unnatural
practice. Unnatural, when it means any thing, means
unfrequent: and there it means something; although nothing
to the present purpose. But here it means no such thing:
for the frequency of such acts is perhaps the great
complaint. It therefore means nothing; nothing, I mean,
which there is in the act itself. All it can serve to express is,
the disposition of the person who is talking of it: the
disposition he is in to be angry at the thoughts of it. Does it
merit his anger? Very likely it may: but whether it does or
no is a question, which, to be answered rightly, can only
be answered upon the principle of utility.
Unnatural, is as good a word as moral sense, or common sense; and would be
as good a foundation for a system. Such an act is unnatural; that is,
repugnant to nature: for I do not like to practice it: and, consequently, do
not practise it. It is therefore repugnant to what ought to be the nature of
every body else.
The mischief common to all these ways of thinking and arguing (which, in
truth, as we have seen, are but one and the same method, couched in
different forms of words) is then serving as a cloke, and pretense, and
aliment, to despotism: if not a despotism in practice, a despotism however
in disposition: which is but too apt, when pretense and power offer, to show
itself in practice. The consequence is, that with intentions very commonly
of the purest kind, a man becomes a torment either to himself or his
fellow-creatures. If he be of the melancholy cast, he sits in silent grief,
bewailing their blindness and depravity: if of the irascible, he declaims
with fury and virulence against all who differ from him; blowing up the
coals of fanaticism, and branding with the charge of corruption and
insincerity, every man who does not think, or profess to think, as he does.
If such a man happens to possess the advantages of style, his book may do a
considerable deal of mischief before the nothingness of it is understood.
These principles, if such they can be called, it is more frequent to see
applied to morals than to politics: but their influence extends itself to
both. In politics, as well as morals, a man will be at least equally glad of
a pretense for deciding any question in the manner that best pleases him
without the trouble of inquiry. If a man is an infallible judge of what is
right and wrong in the actions of private individuals, why not in the
measures to be observed by public men in the direction of those actions
accordingly (not to mention other chimeras) I have more than once
known the pretended law of nature set up in legislative debates, in
opposition to arguments derived from the principle of utility.
"But is it never, then, from any other considerations than those of utility,
that we derive our notions of right and wrong?" I do not know: I do not
care. Whether a moral sentiment can be originally conceived from any
other source than a view of utility, is one question: whether upon
examination and reflection it can, in point of fact, be actually persisted in
and justified on any other ground, by a person reflecting within himself,
is another: whether in point of right it can properly be justified on any
other ground, by a person addressing himself to the community, is a
third. The two first are questions of speculation: it matters not,
comparatively speaking, how they are decided. The last is a question of
practice: the decision of it is of as much importance as that of any can
be.
"I feel in myself", (say you) "a disposition to approve of such or such an
action in a moral view: but this is not owing to any notions I have of its
being a useful one to the community. I do not pretend to know whether it be
an useful one or not: it may be, for aught I know, a mischievous one." "But
is it then", (say I) "a mischievous one? examine; and if you can make
yourself sensible that it is so, then, if duty means any thing, that is,
moral duty, is your duty at least to abstain from it: and more than that, if
it is what lies in your power, and can be done without too great a
sacrifice, to endeavour to prevent it. It is not your cherishing the notion
of it in your bosom, and giving it the name of virtue, that will excuse
you."
"I feel in myself", (say you again) "a disposition to detest such or such an
action in a moral view; but this is not owing to any notions I have of its
being a mischievous one to the community. I do not pretend to know whether
it be a mischievous one or not: it may be not a mischievous one: it may be,
for aught I know, an useful one." -- "May it indeed", (say I) "an useful
one? but let me tell you then, that unless duty, and right and wrong, be
just what you please to make them, if it really be not a mischievous one,
and any body has a mind to do it, it is no duty of yours, but, on the
contrary, it would be very wrong in you, to take upon you to prevent him:
detest it within yourself as much as you please; that may be a very good
reason (unless it be also a useful one) for your not doing it yourself: but
if you go about, by word or deed, to do any thing to hinder him, or make him
suffer for it, it is you, and not he, that have done wrong: it is not your
setting yourself to blame his conduct, or branding it with the name of vice,
that will make him culpable, or you blameless. Therefore, if you can make
yourself content that he shall be of one mind, and you of another, about
that matter, and so continue, it is well: but if nothing will serve you, but
that you and he must needs be of the same mind, I'll tell you what you have
to do: it is for you to get the better of your antipathy, not for him to
truckle to it."
4. King James the First of England had conceived a violent antipathy against
Arians: two of whom he burnt.[10] This gratification he procured himself
without much difficulty: the notions of the times were favourable to it. He
wrote a furious book against Vorstius, for being what was called an
Arminian: for Vorstius was at a distance. He also wrote a furious book,
called `A Counterblast to Tobacco', against the use of that drug which Sir
Walter Raleigh had then lately introduced. Had the notions of the times
co-operated with him, he would have burnt the Anabaptist and the smoker of
tobacco in the same fire. However he had the satisfaction of putting Raleigh
to death afterwards, though for another crime.
Disputes concerning the comparative excellence of French and Italian music
have occasioned very serious bickerings at Paris. One of the parties would
not have been sorry (says Mr. D'Alembert[11]) to have brought government
into the quarrel. Pretences were sought after and urged. Long before that, a
dispute of like nature, and of at least equal warmth, had been kindled at
London upon the comparative merits of two composers at London; where riots
between the approvers and disapprovers of a new play are, at this day, not
unfrequent. The ground of quarrel between the Big-endians and the
Little-endians in the fable, was not more frivolous than many an one which
has laid empires desolate. In Russia, it is said, there was a time when some
thousands of persons lost their lives in a quarrel, in which the government
had taken part, about the number of fingers to be used in making the sign of
the cross. This was in days of yore: the ministers of Catherine II. are
better instructed[12] than to take any other part in such disputes, than
that of preventing the parties concerned from doing one another a mischief.
5. See ch. xvi. [Division], par. 42, 44.
6. The principle of theology refers every thing to God's pleasure. But what
is God's pleasure? God does not, he confessedly does not now, either speak
or write to us. How then are we to know what is his pleasure? By observing
what is our own pleasure, and pronouncing it to be his. Accordingly, what is
called the pleasure of God, is and must necessarily be (revelation apart)
neither more nor less than the good pleasure of the person whoever he be,
who is pronouncing what he believes, or pretends, to be God's pleasure. How
know you it to be God's pleasure that such or such an act should be
abstained from? whence come you even to suppose as much? "Because the
engaging in it would, I imagine, be prejudicial upon the whole to the
happiness of mankind"; says the partisan of the principle of utility:
"Because the commission of it is attended with a gross and sensual, or at
least with a trifling and transient satisfaction"; says the partizan of the
principle of asceticism: "Because I detest the thoughts of it; and I cannot,
neither ought I to be called upon to tell why"; says he who proceeds upon
the principle of antipathy. In the words of one or other of these must that
person necessarily answer (revelation apart) who professes to take for his
standard the will of God.
7. Additional Note by the Author, July 1822.
Add, and that the bad system, of Mahometan and other native law was to be
put down at all events, to make way for the inapplicable and still more
mischievous system of English Judge-made law, and, by the hand of his
accomplice Hastings, was to be put into the pocket of Impey -- Importer of
this instrument of subversion, £8,000 a-year contrary to law, in addition to
the £8,000 a-year lavished upon him, with the customary profusion, by the
hand of law. -- See the Account of the transaction in Mill's British India.
To this Governor a statue is erecting by a vote of East India Directors and
Proprietors: on it should be inscribed -- Let it but put money into our
pockets, no tyranny too flagitious to be worshipped by us.
To this statue of the Arch-malefactor should be added, for a companion, that
of the long. robed accomplice: the one lodging the bribe in the hand of the
other. The hundred millions of plundered and oppressed Hindoos and
Mahometans pay for the one: a Westminster Hall subscription might pay for
the other.
What they have done for Ireland with her seven millions of souls, the
authorized deniers and perverters of justice have done for Hindostan with
her hundred millions. In this there is nothing wonderful. The wonder is --
that, under such institutions, men, though in ever such small number, should
be found, whom the view of the injustices which, by English Judge-made law,
they are compelled to commit, and the miseries they are thus compelled to
produce, deprive of health and rest. witness the Letter of an English
Hindostan Judge, Sept. 1, 1819, which lies before me. I will not make so
cruel a requital for his honesty, as to put his name in print: indeed the
House of Commons' Documents already published leave little need of it.
8. Men(Mu epsilon nu), toi(tau omicron iota), ge(gamma epsilon), nun(nu
upsilon nu), &c.
9. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that -- Provided
always, and it is hereby further enacted and declared that -- &c. &c.
10. Hume's Hist. vol. 6.
11. Melanges Essai sur la Liberté de Musique.
12. Instruc. art. 474, 475, 476.
CHAPTER III.
OF THE FOUR SANCTIONS OR SOURCES OF PAIN AND PLEASURE.
I. It has been shown that the happiness of the individuals, of whom a
community is composed, that is their pleasures and their security, is the
end and the sole end which the legislator ought to have in view: the sole
standard, in conformity to which each individual ought, as far as depends
upon the legislator, to be made to fashion his behaviour. But whether it be
this or any thing else that is to be done, there is nothing by which a man
can ultimately be made to do it, but either pain or pleasure. Having taken a
general view of these two grand objects (viz. pleasure, and what comes to
the same thing, immunity from pain) in the character of final causes; it
will be necessary to take a view of pleasure and pain itself, in the
character of efficient causes or means.
II. There are four distinguishable sources from which pleasure and pain are
in use to flow: considered separately they may be termed the physical, the
political, the moral and the religious: and inasmuch as the pleasures and
pains belonging to each of them are capable of giving a binding force to any
law or rule of conduct, they may all of them termed sanctions.[1]
III. If it be in the present life, and from the ordinary coursed of nature,
not purposely modified by the interposition of these will of any human
being, nor by any extraordinary interposition of any superior invisible
being, that the pleasure or the pain takes place or is expected, it may be
said to issue from or to belong to the physical sanction.
IV. If at the hands of a particular person or set of persons in the
community, who under names correspondent to that of judge, are chosen for
the particular purpose of dispensing it, according to the will of the
sovereign or supreme ruling power in the state, it may be said to issue from
the political sanction.
V. If at the hands of such chance persons in the community, as the party in
question may happen in the course of his life to have concerns with,
according to each man's spontaneous disposition, and not according to any
settled or concerted rule, it may be said to issue from the moral or popular
sanction.[2]
VI.If from the immediate hand of a superior invisible being, either in the
present life, or in a future, it may be said to issue from the religious
sanction.
VII. Pleasures or pains which may be expected to issue from the physical,
political, or moral sanctions, must all of them be expected to be
experienced, if ever, in the present life: those which may be expected to
issue from the religious sanction, may be expected to be experienced either
in the present life or in a future.
VIII. Those which can be experienced in the present life, can of course be
no others than such as human nature in the course of the present life is
susceptible of: and from each of these sources may flow all the pleasures or
pains of which, in the course of the present life, human nature is
susceptible. With regard to these then (with which alone we have in this
place any concern) those of them which belong to any one of those sanctions,
differ not ultimately in kind from those which belong to any one of the
other three: the only difference there is among them lies in the
circumstances that accompany their production. A suffering which befalls a
man in the natural and spontaneous course of things, shall be styled, for
instance, a calamity; in which case, if it be supposed to befall him through
any imprudence of his, it may be styled a punishment issuing from the
physical sanction. Now this same suffering, if inflicted by the law, will be
what is commonly called a punishment; if incurred for want of any friendly
assistance, which the misconduct, or supposed misconduct, of the sufferer
has occasioned to be withholden, a punishment issuing from the moral
sanction; if through the immediate interposition of a particular providence,
a punishment issuing from the religious sanction.
IX. A man's goods, or his person, are consumed by fire. If this happened to
him by what is called an accident, it was a calamity: if by reason of his
own imprudence (for instance, from his neglecting to put his candle out) it
may be styled a punishment of the physical sanction: if it happened to him
by the sentence of the political magistrate, a punishment belonging to the
political sanction; that is, what is commonly called a punishment: if for
want of any assistance which his neighbour withheld from him out of some
dislike to his moral character, a punishment of the moral sanction: if by an
immediate act of God's displeasure, manifested on account of some sin
committed by him, or through any distraction of mind, occasioned by the
dread of such displeasure, a punishment[3] of the religious sanction.
X. As to such of the pleasures and pains belonging to the religious
sanction, as regard a future life, of what kind these may be we cannot know.
These lie not open to our observation. During the present life they are
matter only of expectation: and, whether that expectation be derived from
natural or revealed religion, the particular kind of pleasure or pain, if it
be different from all those which he open to our observation, is what we can
have no idea of. The best ideas we can obtain of such pains and pleasures
are altogether unliquidated in point of quality. In what other respects our
ideas of them may be liquidated will be considered in another place.[4]
XI. Of these four sanctions the physical is altogether, we may observe, the
ground-work of the political and the moral: so is it also of the religious,
in as far as the latter bears relation to the present life. It is included
in each of those other three. This may operate in any case, (that is, any of
the pains or pleasures belonging to it may operate) independently of them:
none of them can operate but by means of this. In a word, the powers of
nature may operate of themselves; but neither the magistrate, nor men at
large, can operate, nor is God in the case in question supposed to operate,
but through the powers of nature.
XII. For these four objects, which in their nature have so much in common,
it seemed of use to find a common name. It seemed of use, in the first
place, for the convenience of giving a name to certain pleasures and pains,
for which a name equally characteristic could hardly otherwise have been
found: in the second place, for the sake of holding up the efficacy of
certain moral forces, the influence of which is apt not to be sufficiently
attended to. Does the political sanction exert an influence over the conduct
of mankind? The moral, the religious sanctions do so too. In every inch of
his career are the operations of the political magistrate liable to be aided
or impeded by these two foreign powers: who, one or other of them, or both,
are sure to be either his rivals or his allies. Does it happen to him to
leave them out in his calculations? he will be sure almost to find himself
mistaken in the result. Of all this we shall find abundant proofs in the
sequel of this work. It behoves him, therefore, to have them continually
before his eyes; and that under such a name as exhibits the relation they
bear to his own purposes and designs.
1. Sanctio, in Latin was used to signify the act of binding, and, by a
common grammatical transition, any thing which serves to bind a man: to wit,
to the observance of such or such a mode of conduct. According to a Latin
grammarian,[5] the import of the word is derived by rather a far-fetched
process (such as those commonly are, and in a great measure indeed must be,
by which intellectual ideas are derived from sensible ones) from the word
sanguis, blood: because, among the Romans, with a view to inculcate into the
people a persuasion that such or such a mode of conduct would be rendered
obligatory upon a man by the force of what I call the religious sanction
(that is, that he would be made to suffer by the extraordinary interposition
of some superior being, if he failed to observe the mode of conduct in
question) certain ceremonies were contrived by the priests: in the course of
which ceremonies the blood of victims was made use of.
A Sanction then is a source of obligatory powers or motives that is, of
pains and pleasures; which, according as they are connected with such or
such modes of conduct, operate, and are indeed the only things which can
operate, as motives. See Chap. x. [Motives].
2. Better termed popular, as more directly indicative of its constituent
cause; as likewise of its relation to the more common phrase public opinion,
in French opinion publique, the name there given to that tutelary power, of
which of late so much is said, and by which so much is done. The latter
appellation is however unhappy and inexpressive; since if opinion is
material, it is only in virtue of the influence it exercises over action,
through the medium of the affections and the will.
3. A suffering conceived to befall a man by the immediate act of God, as
above, is often, for shortness' sake, called a judgment: instead of saying,
a suffering inflicted on him in consequence of a special judgment formed,
and resolution there upon taken, by the Deity.
4. See ch. xiii. [Cases unmeet] par. 2. note.
5. Servius. See Ainsworth's Dict. ad verbum Sanctio.
CHAPTER IV.
VALUE OF A LOT OF PLEASURE OR PAIN, HOW TO BE MEASURED.
I. Pleasures then, and the avoidance of pains, are the ends that the
legislator has in view; it behoves him therefore to understand their value.
Pleasures and pains are the instruments he has to work with: it behoves him
therefore to understand their force, which is again, in other words, their
value.
II. To a person 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]
1. Its intensity.
2. Its duration.
3. Its certainty or uncertainty.
4. Its propinquity or remoteness.
III. These are the circumstances which are to be considered in estimating a
pleasure or a pain considered each of them by itself. But when the value of
any pleasure or pain is considered for the purpose of estimating the
tendency of any act by which it is produced, there are two other
circumstances to be taken into the account; these are,
5. Its 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.
These two last, however, are in strictness scarcely to be deemed properties
of the pleasure or the pain itself; they are not, therefore, in strictness
to be taken into the account of the value of that pleasure or that pain.
They are in strictness to be deemed properties only of the act, or other
event, by which such pleasure or pain has been produced; and accordingly are
only to be taken into the account of the tendency of such act or such event.
IV. To a number of persons, with reference to each of whom to the value of a
pleasure or a pain is considered, it will be greater or less, according to
seven circumstances: to wit, the six preceding ones; viz.
1. Its intensity.
2. Its duration.
3. Its certainty or uncertainty.
4. Its propinquity or remoteness.
5. Its fecundity.
6. Its purity.
And one other; to wit:
7. Its extent; that is, the number of persons to whom it
extends; or (in other words) who are affected by it.
V. To take an exact account then of the general tendency of any act, by
which the interests of a community are affected, proceed as follows. Begin
with any one person of those whose interests seem most immediately to be
affected by it: and take an account,
1. Of the value of each distinguishable pleasure which
appears to be produced by it in the first instance.
2. Of the value of each pain which appears to be
produced by it in the first instance.
3. Of the value of each pleasure which appears to be
produced by it after the first. This constitutes the
fecundity of the first pleasure and the impurity of the first
pain.
4. Of the value of each pain which appears to be
produced by it after the first. This constitutes the fecundity
of the first pain, and the impurity of the first pleasure.
5. Sum up all the values of all the pleasures on the one
side, and those of all the pains on the other. The balance, if
it be on the side of pleasure, will give the good tendency
of the act upon the whole, with respect to the interests of
that individual person; if on the side of pain, the bad
tendency of it upon the whole.
6. Take an account of the number of persons whose
interests appear to be concerned; and repeat the above
process with respect to each. Sum up the numbers
expressive of the degrees of good tendency, which the act
has, with respect to each individual, in regard to whom the
tendency of it is good upon the whole: do this again with
respect to each individual, in regard to whom the tendency
of it is good upon the whole: do this again with respect to
each individual, in regard to whom the tendency of it is
bad upon the whole. Take the balance which if on the
side of pleasure, will give the general good tendency of
the act, with respect to the total number or community of
individuals concerned; if on the side of pain, the general
evil tendency, with respect to the same community.
VI. It is not to be expected that this process should be strictly pursued
previously to every moral judgment, or to every legislative or judicial
operation. It may, however, be always kept in view: and as near as the
process actually pursued on these occasions approaches to it, so near will
such process approach to the character of an exact one.
VII. The same process is alike applicable to pleasure and pain, in whatever
shape they appear: and by whatever denomination they are distinguished: to
pleasure, whether it be called good (which is properly the cause or
instrument of pleasure) or profit (which is distant pleasure, or the cause
or instrument of, distant pleasure,) or convenience, or advantage, benefit,
emolument, happiness, and so forth: to pain, whether it be called evil,
(which corresponds to good) or mischief, or inconvenience. or disadvantage,
or loss, or unhappiness, and so forth.
VIII. Nor is this a novel and unwarranted, any more than it is a useless
theory. In all this there is nothing but what the practice of mankind,
wheresoever they have a clear view of their own interest, is perfectly
conformable to. An article of property, an estate in land, for instance, is
valuable, on what account? On account of the pleasures of all kinds which it
enables a man to produce, and what comes to the same thing the pains of all
kinds which it enables him to avert. But the value of such an article of
property is universally understood to rise or fall according to the length
or shortness of the time which a man has in it: the certainty or uncertainty
of its coming into possession: and the nearness or remoteness of the time at
which, if at all, it is to come into possession. As to the intensity of the
pleasures which a man may derive from it, this is never thought of, because
it depends upon the use which each particular person may come to make of it;
which cannot be estimated till the particular pleasures he may come to
derive from it, or the particular pains he may come to exclude by means of
it, are brought to view. For the same reason, neither does he think of the
fecundity or purity of those pleasures.
Thus much for pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappiness, in general. We
come now to consider the several particular kinds of pain and pleasure.
1. These circumstances have since been denominated elements or dimensions of
value in a pleasure or a pain.
Not long after the publication of the first edition, the following memoriter
verses were framed, in the view of lodging more effectually, in the memory,
these points, on which the whole fabric of morals and legislation may be
seen to rest.
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.
