142 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



stitutions questioned by cultivated men, by men of 

 acknowledged intellect ; and it is not in the nature 

 of uninstructed minds to resist the united authority 

 of the instructed. Bentham broke the spell. It was 

 not Bentham by his own writings ; it was Bentham 

 through the minds and pens which those writings fed — 

 through the men in more direct contact with the world, 

 into whom his spirit passed." 

 12. The second point which is important is this, that 



Legal re- 

 form on Bentham found it necessary, and had the courage, to 



basis of "^ ° 



prindpie select a moral principle whereon to base the legal 

 of utility. I'e forms which he had in view. This principle was 

 selected from the existing vocabulary and ideas of 

 the ethics of his century, solely for the reason that 

 it would work : this means that with its aid the cor- 

 rectness of special existing laws could be tested and 

 the desired change and reform brought about. The 

 moral principle itself, the principle of utility and the 

 definition of utility in this connection as meaning that 

 which is conducive to happiness — the greatest happi- 

 ness of the greatest number — is not an invention of 

 Bentham's, nor exclusively characteristic of his system. 

 Ethical writers of very different shades of opinion re- 

 garding the deeper philosophical problems of the Good, 

 had before him used almost identical expressions ^ with 



1 That the utilitariau aspect, or Adam Smith in the Chair of Moral 



more definitely the "greatest hap- 

 piness " principle, worked itself to 

 the front iu most of the ethical 

 writings of the eighteenth century, 

 is shown by Leslie Stephen in the 

 9th chapter of his ' History of 

 English Thought in the Eighteenth 



Philosophy at the University of 

 Glasgow), Leslie Stephen says that 

 he "appears to have been the fir.st 

 person to proclaim the celebrated 

 formula, the ' greatest happiness of 

 the greatest number.' Hutcheson's 

 use of the phrase occurs in the 



Century ' (1876). Notably of Hut- 'Enquiry concerning Moral Good 

 cheson (1694-1747, a predecessor of '' and Evil' (sec. iii. § 8), 'in the 



