n E N 



BEN 



concealed or modified it. Btit he placed himself above all 

 danger of tins kinil, l>y retiring from the practice of the pro- 

 i for which he nail been educated, and by living in a 

 Dimple manner on a small income allowed him by his 

 father: and when, by the death of his father, he at length 

 came into the possession of a patrimony which secured him 

 moderate competence, from that moment he dismissed 

 frum his mind all further thoughts about his private for- 

 tune, and bent -the whole power of his mind, without dis- 

 traction, to his legislative and moral labours. Nor was ho 

 less careful to keep his benevolent affections fervent, than 

 his understanding free from wrong bias. He surrounded 

 himself only with persons whose sympathies were like his 

 own, and whose sympathies he might direct to their appro- 

 priate objects in the active pursuits of life. Though he. 

 himself took no part in the actual business of legislation 

 and government, yet, cither by personal communication or 

 confidential correspondence with them, he guided the minds 

 of many of the most distinguished legislators and patriots, 

 not only of his own country, but of all countries in both he- 

 tni-pheres. To frame weapons for the advocates of the re- 

 form of the institutions of his own country, was his daily oc- 

 cupation and his highest pleasure; and to him resorted, for 

 counsel and encouragement, the most able and devoted of 

 those advocates; while the patriots and philanthropists of 

 Europe, as well as those of the new world, the countrymen of 

 Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, together with the legis- 

 lators and patriots of South America, speak of him as a tute- 

 lary spirit, and declare the practical application of his princi- 

 ples to be the object and end of their labours.' pp. 49-50. 



The leading principle of Bentham's philosophy is, that 

 the end of all human actions and morality is happiness. 

 By happiness Bentham means pleasure and exemption from 

 pain ; and the fundamental principle from which he starts 

 is, that the action? of sentient beings are wholly governed 

 by pleasure and pain. He held that happiness is the sum- 

 mum bnr.um, in fact, the only thing desirable in itself; that 

 all other things are desirable solely as means to that end ; 

 that therefore the production of the greatest possible amount 

 of happiness is the only fit object of all human exertion; 

 and consequently of all morals and legislation. 



In expounding his doctrines, Mr. Bentham has laid 

 them open to the cavils of many disingenuous minds, and 

 prejudiced against them many generous and honest minds, 

 chiefly, as it appears to us, from not having himself suffi- 

 ciently entered into the metaphysical grounds of them. 

 His system has been branded with the name of 'cold- 

 blooded,' 'calculating,' 'selfish.' It may be shown, how- 

 ever, that what Bentham termed 'selfish,' would in ordinary 

 language frequently be termed, in the highest and purest 

 degree, disinterested and benevolent. Among the very last 

 things which his hand penned, in a book of memoranda, 

 was found the following passage : ' I am a selfish man, as 

 selfish as any man can be. But in me, some how or other, so 

 it happens, selfishness has taken the shape of benevolence. 

 No other man is there upon earth, the prospect of whose 

 sufferings would be to me n pleasurable one : no man is there 

 upon earth, the sight of whose suffering would ii"t to me lie 

 a more or less painful one : no man upon earth is there, the 

 siitht of whose enjoyment, unless believed by me to he de- 

 rived from a more than equivalent suffering endured by sunn- 

 other man, would not be of a pleasurable nature rather than 

 of a painful one. Such in me is the force of sympathy ! 



Now here is a man, who throughout his whole long life 

 never purchased a single gratification at the expense of pain 

 to another ; whose whole happiness throughout life c n-istcd 

 in the contemplation of the happiness of the millions of 

 ' all nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues,' for 

 whom he laboured with the earnestness of one who indeed 

 felt that ' the night cometh in which no man can work ;' and 

 who at the age of eighty-four, carried to his grave the purity 

 and the guilelosMiess of early childhood ; and yet calls hirn- 

 elf tefflth, ' as selfish as any man can be.' 



The last passage quoted from Dr. S. Smith, we think 

 contains, or at least points to the explanation of some of 

 peculiarities which probably narrowed the sphere of 

 lii-niham's usefulness, certainly lowered the degree of his 

 grealncM. We allude to the circumstance of his ' surround- 

 ing himself only with persons whose sympathies were like 

 in.' It has always appeared to us that Bentbam se- 

 cluded himself too much. The' greatest political and legis- 

 lative philosopheW in all ages have mingled, at least occa- 

 sionally, in the business of men, if not testing, at least 



relieving their abstruser meditations, by the study of man 

 as engaged in action. Those too among them, who have 

 exercised most influence over the mind- < i' mankind, have 

 been content, however far their thinking departed from 

 thein, in the general at least to 'speak with the \iil_Mr.' 

 But Bentbam, from the time when he embarked iti 01 1. 

 speculation, not only secluded himself from the jjriicr.il con- 

 verse of his contemporaries, but occupied himself \ery little 

 in studying the ideas of others*, who like hnnself had <lV 

 their lives to thinking. The effect of the fir i.der 



his style inaccessible to the mass of his countrymen ; of the 

 other to produce what has been aptly termed one 

 of mind. His appears, indeed, from all the evidence that w e 

 have collected concerning it, to have been an understanding 

 which, though singularly acute and original, had no . 

 facility in apprehending the thoughts of others. Now Mich 

 an understanding, though vastly superior to that large class 

 of passive understandings which are able to store them- 

 selves with the thoughts of other men, but there >lop, is 

 almost necessarily excluded from the first order of great 

 minds, which possess an equal power in mastering the ideas 

 of others, and striking out new ones of their own. AVithuut 

 this power, a man, however original, will waste much of 

 his energy in making discoveries that have been made l<mg 

 before he was born. His theories, too, will be apt to be 

 wanting in comprehensiveness. And this is a fault which 

 no pains-taking, which no acuteness ever can remedy. 



An assertion of Bentham's, that 'all motives are ab- 

 stractedly good,' has called forth a good deal of criticism, 

 and not a little virtuous indignation among; certain critics. 

 These critics, however, have generally committed the blun- 

 der of confounding motive and intention. Mr. Bentham, 

 never affirmed that all intentions are good ; nor even that 

 all m itivfs are equally likely to produce good actions. By 

 saying that all motives are in themselves good, he merely 

 means as he himself explains it (' Morals and Legislation,' 

 vol. i. p. 169.) that pleasure is in itself a good, a motive 

 being substantially nothing more than plea.-ure or pain. 

 operating in a certain manner, i.e. some pleasure which the 

 act in question is expected to be a means of continuing or 

 producing; some pain which it is expected to be a i: 

 of discontinuing or preventing. And he distinctly lays it 

 down, that although in a single given act, ' goodness or bad- 

 ness cannot, with any propriety, be predicated of mo; 

 yet it may of ' disposition a kind of fictitious entity, 

 feigned for the convenience of discourse, in order to e\ 

 what there is supposed to be permanent in a man's frame 

 of mind, where, on such or such an occasion, he has been 

 influenced by such or such a motive, to eni;ai;e in an act 

 which, as it appeared to him, was of such or such a ten- 

 dency.' (Morals and Legislation, vol. i. p. 218.) 



Bentham appears, from the number of tables sea: 

 through his works, to have been particularly fond of tabu- 

 larizing; and, like many other makers of tallies, as well as 

 other things, he does not show, to our apprehension, any 

 extraordinary excellence in this favourite pursuit. He was 

 fond of heaping division upon di\Uion in almn-t endless 

 extent: and vcrv frequently his classes are distinguishable 

 by no logical differentia that we have ever been able I 

 cover; but form that species of divi-ii>n which has rcc' IMM! 

 the name of a distinction without a difference. A very re- 

 markable example of this occurs in his ' Essay on Nomen- 

 clature and Classification.' He gives the following enume- 

 ration of the faculties of the mind: 



1. Perception. 



2. Judgment 



3. Memory. 



4. Deduction, '. e. Ratioci- 



nation. 



5. Abstraction. 



6. Synthesis, that is, Com- 



bination. 



7. Imagination. 



8. Invention. 



9. Attention. 

 10. Observation. 

 1 1. Com pa i : 

 12. Generalization. 

 i:t. Induction. 

 M. Anah- 



15. Method izotjdn, < 



ranRement. 



16. Distribution. 



17. Communication. 



Ar- 



One of the mo* ttriklag inftancri cf thii i< ' > xm^ in lu 



1 Prontolovy,' a ptMttmnoQi work of Mr 1 ,u was 



writing history, and Eoeiwl lr Aching c il I'htln \u-re 



HOOMDM, under protrnr* of talking wi<lom un<l imir.iliiy. Tins 

 :n *urd*; this winloni of theirs w.i 



',']]> trm.ikaMr th.it 

 l.ty of <orr*te rr*ib4 that of Ilemh r . ,\ ,.,-. -iri.il. 



toil ma liner of eifutilUm lo 1)1.11 uf v 



,y jitiriliuLiti]<- ' in tin- text. \Vhii* 



B nthatn fiied to wctuiion, Sorrntr* lr . m tin- wntlu. Hut 



"Mirjalri wi two thouiand Ji-ar in dvance of hi* KP, ltruili:im jtriliaus t 



tenth or UuU UiLe before liu, SM another note oa Urn subject, pp. sti, 4/, 



