The English Utilitarians Volume I Part 14

[353] _Ibid._ xi. 23-24.

[354] _Ibid._ x. 450.

CHAPTER VI

BENTHAM'S DOCTRINE

I. FIRST PRINCIPLES

Bentham's position is in one respect unique. There have been many greater thinkers; but there has been hardly any one whose abstract theory has become in the same degree the platform of an active political party. To accept the philosophy was to be also pledged to practical applications of Utilitarianism. What, then, was the revelation made to the Benthamites, and to what did it owe its influence? The central doctrine is expressed in Bentham's famous formula: the test of right and wrong is the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' There was nothing new in this a.s.sertion. It only expresses the fact that Bentham accepted one of the two alternatives which have commended themselves to conflicting schools ever since ethical speculation was erected into a separate department of thought. Moreover, the side which Bentham took was, we may say, the winning side. The ordinary morality of the time was Utilitarian in substance. Hutcheson had invented the sacred phrase: and Hume had based his moral system upon 'utility.'[355] Bentham had learned much from Helvetius the French freethinker, and had been antic.i.p.ated by Paley the English divine. The writings in which Bentham deals explicitly with the general principles of Ethics would hardly ent.i.tle him to a higher position than that of a disciple of Hume without Hume's subtlety; or of Paley without Paley's singular gift of exposition. Why, then, did Bentham's message come upon his disciples with the force and freshness of a new revelation? Our answer must be in general terms that Bentham founded not a doctrine but a method: and that the doctrine which came to him simply as a general principle was in his hands a potent instrument applied with most fruitful results to questions of immediate practical interest.

Beyond the general principle of utility, therefore, we have to consider the 'organon' constructed by him to give effect to a general principle too vague to be applied in detail. The fullest account of this is contained in the _Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation_. This work unfortunately is a fragment, but it gives his doctrine vigorously and decisively, without losing itself in the minute details which become wearisome in his later writings. Bentham intended it as an introduction to a penal code; and his investigation sent him back to more general problems. He found it necessary to settle the relations of the penal code to the whole body of law; and to settle these he had to consider the principles which underlie legislation in general. He had thus, he says, to 'create a new science,' and then to elaborate one department of the science. The 'introduction' would contain prolegomena not only for the penal code but for the other departments of inquiry which he intended to exhaust.[356] He had to lay down primary truths which should be to this science what the axioms are to mathematical sciences.[357] These truths therefore belong to the sphere of conduct in general, and include his ethical theory.

'Nature has placed mankind' (that is his opening phrase) '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.' There is the una.s.sailable basis. It had been laid down as unequivocally by Locke,[358] and had been embodied in the brilliant couplets of Pope's _Essay on Man_.[359] At the head of the curious table of universal knowledge, given in the _Chrestomathia_, we have Eudaemonics as an all-comprehensive name of which every art is a branch.[360]

Eudaemonics, as an art, corresponds to the science 'ontology.' It covers the whole sphere of human thought. It means knowledge in general as related to conduct. Its first principle, again, requires no more proof than the primary axioms of arithmetic or geometry. Once understood, it is by the same act of the mind seen to be true. Some people, indeed, do not see it. Bentham rather ignores than answers some of their arguments.

But his mode of treating opponents indicates his own position.

'Happiness,' it is often said, is too vague a word to be the keystone of an ethical system; it varies from man to man: or it is 'subjective,'

and therefore gives no absolute or independent ground for morality. A morality of 'eudaemonism' must be an 'empirical' morality, and we can never extort from it that 'categorical imperative,' without which we have instead of a true morality a simple system of 'expediency.' From Bentham's point of view the criticism must be retorted. He regards 'happiness' as precisely the least equivocal of words; and 'happiness'

itself as therefore affording the one safe clue to all the intricate problems of human conduct. The authors of the _Federalist_, for example, had said that justice was the 'end of government.' 'Why not happiness?'

asks Bentham. 'What happiness is every man knows, because what pleasure is, every man knows, and what pain is, every man knows. But what justice is--this is what on every occasion is the subject-matter of dispute.'[361] That phrase gives his view in a nutsh.e.l.l. Justice is the means, not the end. That is just which produces a maximum of happiness.

Omit all reference to Happiness, and Justice becomes a meaningless word prescribing equality, but not telling us equality of what. Happiness, on the other hand, has a substantial and independent meaning from which the meaning of justice can be deduced. It has therefore a logical priority: and to attempt to ignore this is the way to all the labyrinths of hopeless confusion by which legislation has been made a chaos. Bentham's position is indicated by his early conflict with Blackstone, not a very powerful representative of the opposite principle. Blackstone, in fact, had tried to base his defence of that eminently empirical product, the British Const.i.tution, upon some show of a philosophical groundwork. He had used the vague conception of a 'social contract,' frequently invoked for the same purpose at the revolution of 1688, and to eke out his arguments applied the ancient commonplaces about monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. He thus tried to invest the const.i.tution with the sanct.i.ty derived from this mysterious 'contract,' while appealing also to tradition or the incarnate 'wisdom of our ancestors,' as shown by their judicious mixture of the three forms. Bentham had an easy task, though he performed it with remarkable vigour, in exposing the weakness of this heterogeneous aggregate. Look closely, and this fict.i.tious contract can impose no new obligation: for the obligation itself rests upon Utility. Why not appeal to Utility at once? I am bound to obey, not because my great-grandfather may be regarded as having made a bargain, which he did not really make, with the great-grandfather of George III.; but simply because rebellion does more harm than good. The forms of government are abstractions, not names of realities, and their 'mixture'

is a pure figment. King, Lords, and Commons are not really incarnations of power, wisdom, and goodness. Their combination forms a system the merits of which must in the last resort be judged by its working. 'It is the principle of utility, accurately apprehended and steadily applied, that affords the only clew to guide a man through these streights.'[362]

So much in fact Bentham might learn from Hume; and to defend upon any other ground the congeries of traditional arrangements which pa.s.sed for the British Const.i.tution was obviously absurd. It was in this warfare against the shifting and ambiguous doctrines of Blackstone that Bentham first showed the superiority of his own method: for, as between the two, Bentham's position is at least the most coherent and intelligible.

Blackstone, however, represents little more than a bit of rhetoric embodying fragments of inconsistent theories. The _Morals and Legislation_ opens by briefly and contemptuously setting aside more philosophical opponents of Utilitarianism. The 'ascetic' principle, for example, is the formal contradiction of the principle of Utility, for it professedly declares pleasure to be evil. Could it be consistently carried out it would turn earth into h.e.l.l. But in fact it is at bottom an illegitimate corollary from the very principle which it ostensibly denies. It professes to condemn pleasure in general; it really means that certain pleasures can only be bought at an excessive cost of pain.

Other theories are contrivances for avoiding the appeal 'to any external standard'; and in substance, therefore, they make the opinion of the individual theorist an ultimate and sufficient reason. Adam Smith by his doctrine of 'sympathy' makes the sentiment of approval itself the ultimate standard. My feeling echoes yours, and reciprocally; each cannot derive authority from the other. Another man (Hutcheson) invents a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong and calls it a 'moral sense.' Beattie subst.i.tutes 'common' for 'moral'

sense, and his doctrine is attractive because every man supposes himself to possess common sense. Others, like Price, appeal to the Understanding, or, like Clarke, to the 'Fitness of Things,' or they invent such phrases as 'Law of Nature,' or 'Right Reason' or 'Natural Justice,' or what you please. Each really means that whatever he says is infallibly true and self-evident. Wollaston discovers that the only wrong thing is telling a lie; or that when you kill your father, it is a way of saying that he is not your father, and the same method is applicable to any conduct which he happens to dislike. The 'fairest and openest of them all' is the man who says, 'I am of the number of the Elect'; G.o.d tells the Elect what is right: therefore if you want to know what is right, you have only to come to me.[363] Bentham is writing here in his pithiest style. His criticism is of course of the rough and ready order; but I think that in a fashion he manages to hit the nail pretty well on the head.

His main point, at any rate, is clear. He argues briefly that the alternative systems are illusory because they refer to no 'external standard.' His opponents, not he, really make morality arbitrary. This, whatever the ultimate truth, is in fact the essential core of all the Utilitarian doctrine descended from or related to Benthamism. Benthamism aims at converting morality into a science. Science, according to him, must rest upon facts. It must apply to real things, and to things which have definite relations and a common measure. Now, if anything be real, pains and pleasures are real. The expectation of pain or pleasure determines conduct; and, if so, it must be the sole determinant of conduct. The attempt to conceal or evade this truth is the fatal source of all equivocation and confusion. Try the experiment. Introduce a 'moral sense.' What is its relation to the desire for happiness? If the dictates of the moral sense be treated as ultimate, an absolutely arbitrary element is introduced; and we have one of the 'innate ideas'

exploded by Locke, a belief summarily intruded into the system without definite relations to any other beliefs: a dogmatic a.s.sertion which refuses to be tested or to be correlated with other dogmas; a reduction therefore of the whole system to chaos. It is at best an instinctive belief which requires to be justified and corrected by reference to some other criterion. Or resolve morality into 'reason,' that is, into some purely logical truth, and it then remains in the air--a mere nonent.i.ty until experience has supplied some material upon which it can work. Deny the principle of utility, in short, as he says in a vigorous pa.s.sage,[364] and you are involved in a hopeless circle. Sooner or later you appeal to an arbitrary and despotic principle and find that you have subst.i.tuted words for thoughts.

The only escape from this circle is the frank admission that happiness is, in fact, the sole aim of man. There are, of course, different kinds of happiness as there are different kinds of physical forces. But the motives to action are, like the physical forces, commensurable. Two courses of conduct can always be compared in respect of the happiness produced, as two motions of a body can be compared in respect of the energy expended. If, then, we take the moral judgment to be simply a judgment of amounts of happiness, the whole theory can be systematised, and its various theorems ranged under a single axiom or consistent set of axioms. Pain and pleasure give the real value of actions; they are the currency with a definite standard into which every general rule may be translated. There is always a common measure applicable in every formula for the estimation of conduct. If you admit your Moral Sense, you profess to settle values by some standard which has no definite relation to the standard which in fact governs the normal transactions.

But any such double standard, in which the two measures are absolutely incommensurable, leads straight to chaos. Or, if again you appeal to reason in the abstract, you are attempting to settle an account by pure arithmetic without reference to the units upon which your operation is performed. Two pounds and two pounds will make four pounds whatever a pound may be; but till I know what it is, the result is nugatory.

Somewhere I must come upon a basis of fact, if my whole construction is to stand.

This is the fundamental position implied in Bentham's doctrine. The moral judgment is simply one case of the judgment of happiness. Bentham is so much convinced of this that to him there appeared to be in reality no other theory. What pa.s.sed for theories were mere combinations of words. Having said this, we know where to lay the foundations of the new science. It deals with a vast complicity of facts: it requires 'investigations as severe as mathematical ones, but beyond all comparison more intricate and extensive.'[365] Still it deals with facts, and with facts which have a common measure, and can, therefore, be presented as a coherent system. To present this system, or so much of it as is required for purposes of legislation, is therefore his next task. The partial execution is the chief substance of the _Introduction_. Right and wrong conduct, we may now take for granted, mean simply those cla.s.ses of conduct which are conducive to or opposed to happiness; or, in the sacred formula, to act rightly means to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The legislator, like every one else, acts rightly in so far as he is guided by the principle (to use one of the phrases coined by Bentham) of 'maximising' happiness.

He seeks to affect conduct; and conduct can be affected only by annexing pains or pleasures to given cla.s.ses of actions. Hence we have a vitally important part of his doctrine--the theory of 'sanctions.' Pains and pleasures as annexed to action are called 'sanctions.' There are 'physical or natural,' 'political, 'moral or popular,' and 'religious'

sanctions. The 'physical' sanctions are such pleasures and pains as follow a given course of conduct independently of the interference of any other human or supernatural being; the 'political' those which are annexed by the action of the legislator; the 'moral or popular' those which are annexed by other individuals not acting in a corporate capacity; and the 'religious' those which are annexed by a 'superior invisible being,' or, as he says elsewhere,[366] 'such as are capable of being expected at the hands of an invisible Ruler of the Universe.' The three last sanctions, he remarks, 'operate through the first.' The 'magistrate' or 'men at large' can only operate, and G.o.d is supposed only to operate, 'through the powers of nature,' that is, by applying some of the pains and pleasures which may also be natural sanctions. A man is burnt: if by his own imprudence, that is a 'physical' sanction; if by the magistrate, it is a 'political' sanction; if by some neglect of his neighbours, due to their dislike of his 'moral character,' a 'moral' sanction; if by the immediate act of G.o.d or by distraction caused by dread of G.o.d's displeasure, it is a 'religious' sanction. Of these, as Bentham characteristically observes[367] in a later writing the political is much stronger than the 'moral' or 'religious.' Many men fear the loss of character or the 'wrath of Heaven,' but all men fear the scourge and the gallows.[368] He admits, however, that the religious sanction and the additional sanction of 'benevolence' have the advantage of not requiring that the offender should be found out.[369] But in any case, the 'natural' and religious sanctions are beyond the legislator's power. His problem, therefore, is simply this: what sanctions ought he to annex to conduct, or remembering that 'ought' means simply 'conducive to happiness,' what political sanctions will increase happiness?

To answer this fully will be to give a complete system of legislation; but in order to answer it we require a whole logical and psychological apparatus. Bentham shows this apparatus at work, but does not expound its origin in any separate treatise. Enough information, however, is given as to his method in the curious collection of the fragments connected with the _Chrestomathia_. A logical method upon which he constantly insisted is that of 'bipart.i.tion,'[370] called also the 'dichotomous' or 'bifurcate' method, and exemplified by the so-called 'Porphyrian Tree.' The principle is, of course, simple. Take any genus: divide it into two cla.s.ses, one of which has and the other has not a certain mark. The two cla.s.ses must be mutually exclusive and together exhaustive. Repeat the operation upon each of the cla.s.ses and continue the process as long as desired.[371] At every step you thus have a complete enumeration of all the species, varieties, and so on, each of which excludes all the others. No mere logic, indeed, can secure the accuracy and still less the utility of the procedure. The differences may be in themselves ambiguous or irrelevant. If I cla.s.sify plants as 'trees' and 'not trees,' the logical form is satisfied: but I have still to ask whether 'tree' conveys a determinate meaning, and whether the distinction corresponds to a difference of any importance. A perfect cla.s.sification, however, could always be stated in this form. Each species, that is, can be marked by the presence or absence of a given difference, whether we are dealing with cla.s.ses of plants or actions: and Bentham aims at that consummation though he admits that centuries may be required for the construction of an accurate cla.s.sification in ethical speculations.[372] He exaggerates the efficiency of his method, and overlooks the tendency of tacit a.s.sumptions to smuggle themselves into what affects to be a mere enumeration of cla.s.ses. But in any case, no one could labour more industriously to get every object of his thought arranged and labelled and put into the right pigeon-hole of his mental museum. To codify[373] is to cla.s.sify, and Bentham might be defined as a codifying animal.

Things thus present themselves to Bentham's mind as already prepared to fit into pigeon-holes. This is a characteristic point, and it appears in what we must call his metaphysical system. 'Metaphysics,' indeed, according to him, is simply 'a sprig,' and that a small one, of the 'branch termed Logic.'[374] It is merely the explanation of certain general terms such as 'existence,' 'necessity,' and so forth.[375] Under this would apparently fall the explanation of 'reality' which leads to a doctrine upon which he often insists, and which is most implicitly given in the fragment called _Ontology_. He there distinguishes 'real' from 'fict.i.tious ent.i.ties,' a distinction which, as he tells us,[376] he first learned from d'Alembert's phrase _etres fictifs_ and which he applies in his _Morals and Legislation_. 'Real ent.i.ties,' according to him,[377] are 'individual perceptions,' 'impressions,' and 'ideas.' In this, of course, he is following Hume, though he applies the Johnsonian argument to Berkeley's immaterialism.[378] A 'fict.i.tious ent.i.ty' is a name which does note 'raise up in the mind any correspondent images.'[379] Such names owe their existence to the necessities of language. Without employing such fictions, however, 'the language of man could not have risen above the language of brutes';[380] and he emphatically distinguishes them from 'unreal' or 'fabulous ent.i.ties.' A 'fict.i.tious ent.i.ty' is not a 'nonent.i.ty.'[381] He includes among such ent.i.ties all Aristotle's 'predicaments' except the first: 'substance.'[382] Quant.i.ty, quality, relation, time, place are all 'physical fict.i.tious ent.i.ties.' This is apparently equivalent to saying that the only 'physical ent.i.ties' are concrete things--sticks, stones, bodies, and so forth--the 'reality' of which he takes for granted in the ordinary common sense meaning. It is also perfectly true that things are really related, have quant.i.ty and quality, and are in time and s.p.a.ce.

But we cannot really conceive the quality or relation apart from the concrete things so qualified and related. We are forced by language to use substantives which in their nature have only the sense of adjectives. He does not suppose that a body is not really square or round; but he thinks it a fiction to speak of squareness or roundness or s.p.a.ce in general as something existing apart from matter and, in some sense, alongside of matter.

This doctrine, which brings us within sight of metaphysical problems beyond our immediate purpose, becomes important to his moral speculation. His special example of a 'fict.i.tious ent.i.ty' in politics is 'obligation.'[383] Obligations, rights, and similar words are 'fict.i.tious ent.i.ties.' Obligation in particular implies a metaphor. The statement that a man is 'obliged' to perform an act means simply that he will suffer pain if he does not perform it. The use of the word obligation, as a noun substantive, introduces the 'fict.i.tious ent.i.ty'

which represents nothing really separable from the pain or pleasure.

Here, therefore, we have the ground of the doctrine already noticed.

'Pains and pleasures' are real.[384] 'Their existence,' he says,[385]

'is matter of universal and constant experience.' But other various names referring to these: emotion, inclination, vice, virtue, etc., are only 'psychological ent.i.ties.' 'Take away pleasures and pains, not only happiness but justice and duty and obligation and virtue--all of which have been so elaborately held up to view as independent of them--are so many empty sounds.'[386] The ultimate facts, then, are pains and pleasures. They are the substantives of which these other words are properly the adjectives. A pain or a pleasure may exist by itself, that is without being virtuous or vicious: but virtue and vice can only exist in so far as pain and pleasure exists.

This a.n.a.lysis of 'obligation' is a characteristic doctrine of the Utilitarian school. We are under an 'obligation' so far as we are affected by a 'sanction.' It appeared to Bentham so obvious as to need no demonstration, only an exposition of the emptiness of any verbal contradiction. Such metaphysical basis as he needed is simply the attempt to express the corresponding conception of reality which, in his opinion, only requires to be expressed to carry conviction.

NOTES:

[355] See note under Bentham's life, _ante_, p. 178.

[356] Preface to _Morals and Legislation_.

[357] _Works_, i. ('Morals and Legislation'), ii. _n._

[358] _Essay_, bk. ii. ch. xxi. -- 39--- 44. The will, says Locke, is determined by the 'uneasiness of desire.' What moves desire? Happiness, and that alone. Happiness is pleasure, and misery pain. What produces pleasure we call good; and what produces pain we call evil. Locke, however, was not a consistent Utilitarian.

[359] Epistle iv., opening lines.

[360] _Works_, vii. 82.

[361] _Works_ ('Const.i.tutional Code'), ix. 123.

[362] _Works_ ('Fragment'), i. 287.

[363] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 8-10. Mill quotes this pa.s.sage in his essay on Bentham in the first volume of his _Dissertations_. This essay, excellent in itself must be specially noticed as an exposition by an authoritative disciple.

[364] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 13.

[365] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. v.

[366] _Works_ ('Evidence'), vi. 261.

[367] _Works_ ('Evidence'), vii. 116.

[368] _Ibid._ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 14, etc.; _Ibid._ vi. 260.

In _Ibid._ ('Evidence') vii. 116, 'humanity,' and in 'Logical Arrangements,' _Ibid._ ii. 290, 'sympathy' appears as a fifth sanction.

Another modification is suggested in _Ibid._ i. 14 _n._

[369] _Ibid._ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 67.

[370] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 96 _n._

[371] See especially _Ibid._ viii. 104, etc.; 253, etc.; 289, etc.

[372] _Ibid._ viii. 106.

[373] 'Codify' was one of Bentham's successful neologisms.

[374] _Works_ ('Logic'), viii. 220.