242 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



"such a principle as this that should be accepted as the fundamental 

 principle of legislation ; this is too obscure, too vague, too susceptible of 

 different interpretations; it would leave too much to the arbitrary 

 judgment of the legislation." The only safe guide in legislation is 

 the principe du plus grand bonheur. "The problem of the legislator 

 is simply this : A multitude of men being collected together, to procure 

 for them the greatest sum of happiness possible. It is upon his prin- 

 ciple that all systems of legislation should be based." All this reads 

 like so many sentences from Bentham himself; and the resemblance is 

 by no means merely coincidental. In the ethical and political writings 

 of Maupertuis and of Helvetius we have the head-waters of the im- 

 portant stream of utilitarian influence which became so broad and 

 sweeping a current through the work of the Benthamites. Bentham 

 read Maupertuis early — perhaps about 1770, in his twenty-second or 

 twenty-third year, thinks a recent writer on the subject* — and al- 

 though he had already got the suggestion of his doctrine from Priestley 

 and Helvetius and Beccaria, he found, as he himself tells us, his 

 utilitarian tendencies strengthened and corroborated by his reading 

 of the 'Essai de Philosophie Morale. 'f The utilitarian political teach- 

 ing of Maupertuis was enunciated at least three years before the publi- 

 cation of a similar doctrine in the book of Helvetius (De VEsprit, 

 1758) ; and that book, Mr. John Morley has said, 'contained the one 

 principle capable of supplying such a system of thinking about society 

 as would have taught the French of that time in what direction to look 

 for reforms.' The work of Beccaria, the third of the early influences 

 upon the mind of Bentham, was still later in date of publication 

 (1764). 



In treating of the relation of scientific method to theology, Mau- 

 pertuis — although professing a somewhat perfunctory religious ortho- 

 doxy — criticized the favorite eighteenth century argument for theism 

 — the so-called argument from design — in which the deists no less than 

 the orthodox of the period found the principal basis of their religious 

 philosophy ; and his criticism upon it is just such as a Darwinian might 

 now make. It closely resembles, indeed, the criticism of the same 

 argument that Bomanes put forward long afterward as a special out- 

 come of Darwinism. J Many, says Maupertuis, have found an evi- 

 dence of design in the marvelous adaptation of the organs of animals 

 to their needs. But "may we not say that, in the fortuitous combina- 

 tion of the productions of Nature, since only those creatures could 

 survive in whose organization a certain degree of adaptation was 

 present (ou se trouvaient certains rapports de convenance), there is 

 nothing extraordinary in the fact that such adaptation is actually 



* Halevy, 'La jeunesse de Bentham,' 1901, p. 288. 



t Ibid., p. 406. 



t ' A Candid Examination of Theism.' 



