in the same words; but Bentham does not seem to have been influenced directly by him. Helvétius, whom he had studied closely, comes very near the same doctrine1, and Priestley had preceded Bentham in using a similar standard in political reasoning. Priestley is not mentioned in this place, though the preface begins with a reference to his scientific discoveries, and Bentham has elsewhere recorded his youthful enthusiasm for his writings. He even says that he had found the phrase "greatest happiness of the greatest number" in one of Priestley's pamphlets; but in this his memory must have deceived him, for the phrase does not seem to have been used by Priestley. So far as Bentham was concerned, its origin (as he in one place suggests) must be traced to Beccaria2, the Italian jurist whose work on the penal law proceeded on the same principles as Bentham's and had a notable effect upon the latter. Beccaria's book on Crimes and Punishments was translated into English in 1767, and, in this translation, the principle of utility is expressed in the exact words in which, through Bentham's influence, it soon became both an ethical formula and a party watchword. Bentham himself used the word "utilitarian " as early as 1781, and he asserted that it was the only name for his creed3; but, in later life, he came to prefer the alternative phrase "greatest happiness principle." "The word utility," he said, in a note written in July 18224, "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." A few months after the latter date, the term "utilitarian " was revived by John Stuart Mill5, who seems to have been unaware that it had been previously 1 "La justice consiste...dans la pratique des actions utiles au plus grand nombre."-De l'Esprit (1758), discours II, chap. 24.

2 See above, p. 162 n.

3 Works, vol. x, pp. 92, 392.

4

Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. 1879, p. I n.

5 Autobiography, pp. 79, 80; Utilitarianism, p. 9 n.

employed and afterwards discarded by Bentham; he found the word in Galt's Annals of the Parish, where it is used in describing some of the revolutionary parties of the early nineties of the preceding century; and, "with a boy's fondness for a name and a banner," he adopted it as a "sectarian appellation." After this time, "utilitarian " and "utilitarianism" came into common use to designate a party and a creed.

The evidence goes to show that the "greatest happiness principle," or principle of utility, was arrived at by Bentham, in the first instance, as a criterion for legislation and administration and not for individual conduct-as a political, rather than an ethical, principle. His concern was with politics; the sections of Hume's Treatise which chiefly influenced him were those on justice; Beccaria wrote on the penal law; and it was expressly as a political principle that Priestley made use of "the happiness of the members, that is the majority of the members, of any state," as his standard. The point is important, seeing that, from the time of Locke, the action of every individual had been commonly interpreted as determined by his own. pleasure and pain. It is difficult to reconcile this interpretation (which Bentham accepted) with an ethical theory which makes the greatest happiness of all the end for each. But the same difficulty does not arise when the point of view is shifted from the individual to the state. Indeed, an analogical argument will now be open: since each person is concerned with his own greatest happiness, the end for the community may be taken to be the greatest happiness of the greatest number. And, when the greatest happiness of the greatest number" has been accepted in this way, it is easy-though it is not logical—to adopt it as not merely a political, but also in the strict sense an ethical, principle.

It is to his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation that we must look for Bentham's fullest and clearest account of the underlying principles, psycholo

gical and ethical, of his enterprise. The interests of the individual do not always agree with the interests of the community; and this divergence sets the problem for penal law. Again, the rule of right is one question, and the causes of action is another question; and it is important not to confuse the ethical with the psychological problem. This distinction is made, and ignored, in the arresting paragraph that opens the work: "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognises this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.”

These sentences give the gist of Bentham's simple philosophy. Everything rests upon pleasure and pain. They are, in the first place, the causes of all human actions. Man is a pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding animal. It is true, he has many different impulses, springs of action, or motives; and of these the author essays some account in this book; and, in A Table of the Springs of Action, he comprehends them all in a diagram with their sources and their corresponding interests. But the strength of each impulse or motive lies entirely in the pleasure or pain connected with it; and there are only quantitative differences among pleasures themselves, or among pains themselves; and pains can be compared with pleasures,

and marked on the same scale by their distance below the indifference or zero point where there is neither pleasure nor pain. To this theory a later writer1 has given the name psychological hedonism.' It still counts many psychologists among its adherents, but Bentham held it in a special form which hardly admits of defence. It is not the actual pleasure or pain experienced at the moment of action which, according to him, determines action, but the estimate formed by the agent of the probable balance of pleasure that is likely to result to him from the action. The cause, as well as the standard, of human action is thus matter of 'future fact' only. Had this phrase been used by Blackstone, Bentham might have pointed out that, so long as anything is future, it is not a fact but only an expectation of a fact; it is an estimate of probabilities. Not pleasure, therefore, but an idea of pleasure, is the actual motive. Although he thinks that pleasure is man's only object, Bentham always treats him as pursuing this object in a deliberate and intelligent way under the guidance of ideas or opinions; he commits the philosopher's fallacy of substituting a reason for a cause; he overlooks the fact that man was an active being before he was a rational being, that he is a creature of impulses, inherited and acquired, that it is only gradually that these impulses come to be organised and directed by reason, and that this rationalising process is never completed.

Bentham's views on this point lend emphasis to the importance of his hedonic calculus. If men are always guided by estimates of pleasures and pains, these estimates should be rendered as exact as possible. For this purpose Bentham analyses the circumstances that have to be taken into account in estimating the 'force' or 'value' (notions which, for him, are identical) of pleasures and pains. A pleasure or pain, he says, taken by itself, will vary in the four circumstances of intensity, duration, certainty, and

1 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, book 1, chap. iv.

propinquity1. If we consider its effects, we must take into account two other circumstances: its fecundity, or the chance of its being followed by other feelings of the same kind; and its purity, or the chance of its not being followed by feelings of an opposite kind. If more than one person is concerned, then account must also be taken of the number of persons, that is, the extent of the pleasure or pain. It we would estimate the benefit to a community of any particular action, then each person affected by it must be considered separately; each distinguishable pleasure caused by the action must have its value for him calculated in accordance with the six circumstances first mentioned; and each distinguishable pain must have its value calculated in the same way. When this has been done for every person affected, and the sum of all the pains subtracted from the sum of all the pleasures, then the surplus of pleasure will measure the good tendency of the act; or, if the pains exceed the pleasures in total amount, then the balance of pain will measure the evil tendency of the act.

This may seem an elaborate calculation, but it gives only a faint idea of the minute detail into which Bentham pursued an estimate of good or evil. The significant feature of his method is that it is quantitative. The same method had been suggested by Hutcheson and others before him; his contemporary Paley used it to some extent; but Bentham was the first to follow it out into all its ramifications by an exhaustive enumeration and classification of every conceivable consequence. His aim was to make morals and legislation as precise and certain as the physical sciences. For this purpose, he saw that quantitative propositions were necessary. He did not stop to enquire

1 Sidgwick points out that, on a rational estimate, propinquity in time (apart from the greater certainty which it implies) is not an independent ground of value. Bentham follows Beccaria in introducing it; but Beccaria had a different question in view in his enquiry, namely, the actual deterrent effect of an immediate, as compared with a remote, punishment.