OF THE GOOD. 143 



regard to utility and happiness ; but through Bentham 

 and his disciples the vocabulary of the utilitarian school 

 became fixed, crystallised in certain watchwords and offered 

 for the use of practical moralists, legislators, and social 

 reformers. In this respect Bentham was a pioneer in 

 the application of definite moral axioms, abstracted from 

 the consensus of thinking persons without special respect 

 for traditional beliefs or prejudices. Before him Adam 

 Smith had already applied ethical speculation to one 

 special problem of practical life — to the Industrial 

 Problem. Instead, however, of combining his principles 

 of morality with those of social welfare or wealth, in 

 the same way as Bentham did those of morals and 

 legislation, Adam Smith separated the two problems ; 

 he did not force the deeper moral problem on the 

 attention of practical thinkers in the same way as 

 Bentham did in his own special subject. Bentham 

 forced political philosophers to think about the ethical 

 meaning, the morality of their doctrines ; Adam Smith 

 hardly considered the morality or immorality of in- 

 dustrialism. This only became an important ethical 

 problem a century after the appearance of the ' Wealth 

 of Nations.' With Adam Smith and many of his 

 followers it was and remained a psychological, an 

 anthropological problem. 



It will be well now to contrast with the movement 

 associated in England with the name of Bentham, that 



same manner the moral evil or passages from Priestley and Bee- 

 vice is as the degree of misery and caria, Leslie Stephen concludes : 

 number of sufferers; so that that "Hutcheson has clearly the right 



action is best which accomplishes 

 the greatest happiness for the great- 

 est numbers.' " After referring to 



of priority whatever the value of 

 the thing claimed " {loc. cit., vol. ii. 

 p. 61). 



