|
Direct link to original site is the left icon and
bottom of pages.
An Introduction to the
Principles
of Morals and Legislation
Jeremy Bentham 1781
Contents
Preface
I:
Of The Principle of Utility
II:
Of Principles Adverse to that of Utility
III:
Of the Four Sanctions or Sources of Pain and Pleasure
IV:
Value of a Lot of Pleasure or Pain, How to be Measured
V:
Pleasures and Pains, Their Kinds
VI:
Of Circumstances Influencing Sensibility
VII:
Of Human Actions in General
VIII:
Of Intentionality
IX:
Of Consciousness
X:
Of Motives
XI:
Human Dispositions in General
XII:
Of the Consequences of a Mischievous Act
XIII:
Cases Unmeet for Punishment
XIV:
Of the Proportion between Punishments and Offences
XV:
Of the Properties to be Given to a Lot of Punishment
XVI:
Division of Offenses
XVII:
Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence
Notes
Preface
The
following sheets were, as the note on the opposite page
expresses, printed so long ago as the year 1780. The design, in
pursuance of which they were written, was not so extensive as
that announced by the present title. They had at that time no
other destination than that of serving as an introduction to a
plan of a penal code in terminus, designed to follow them, in the
same volume.
The
body of the work had received its completion according to the
then present extent of the author's views, when, in the
investigation of some flaws he had discovered, he found himself
unexpectedly entangled in an unsuspected corner of the
metaphysical maze. A suspension, at first not apprehended to be
more than a temporary one, necessarily ensued: suspension brought
on coolness, and coolness, aided by other concurrent causes,
ripened into disgust.
Imperfections
pervading the whole mass had already been pointed out by the
sincerity of severe and discerning friends; and conscience had
certified the justness of their censure. The inordinate length of
some of the chapters, the apparent inutility of others, and the
dry and metaphysical turn of the whole, suggested an
apprehension, that, if published in its present form, the work
would contend under great disadvantages for any chance, it might
on other accounts possess, of being read, and consequently of
being of use.
But,
though in this manner the idea of completing the present work
slid insensibly aside, that was not by any means the case with
the considerations which had led him to engage in it. Every
opening, which promised to afford the lights he stood in need of,
was still pursued: as occasion arose the several departments
connected with that in which he had at first engaged, were
successively explored; insomuch that, in one branch or other of
the pursuit, his researches have nearly embraced the whole field
of legislation.
Several
causes have conspired at present to bring to light, under this
new title, a work which under its original one had been
imperceptibly, but as it had seemed irrevocably, doomed to
oblivion. In the course of eight years, materials for various
works, corresponding to the different branches of the subject of
legislation, had been produced, and some nearly reduced to shape:
and, in every one of those works, the principles exhibited in the
present publication had been found so necessary, that, either to
transcribe them piecemeal, or to exhibit them somewhere where
they could be referred to in the lump, was found unavoidable. The
former course would have occasioned repetitions too bulky to be
employed without necessity in the execution of a plan unavoidably
so voluminous: the latter was therefore indisputably the
preferable one.
To
publish the materials in the form in which they were already
printed, or to work them up into a new one, was therefore the
only alternative: the latter had all along been his wish, and,
had time and the requisite degree of alacrity been at command, it
would as certainly have been realised. Cogent considerations,
however, concur, with the irksomeness of the task, in placing the
accomplishment of it at present at an unfathomable distance.
Another
consideration is, that the suppression of the present work, had
it been ever so decidedly wished, is no longer altogether in his
power. In the course of so long an interval, various incidents
have introduced copies into various hands, from some of which
they have been transferred by deaths and other accidents, into
others that are unknown to him. Detached, but considerable
extracts, have even been published, without any dishonourable
views (for the name of the author was very honestly subjoined to
them), but without his privity, and in publications undertaken
without his knowledge.
It
may perhaps be necessary to add, to complete his excuse for
offering to the public a work pervaded by blemishes, which have
not escaped even the author's partial eye, that the censure, so
justly bestowed upon the form, did not extend itself to the
matter.
In
sending it thus abroad into the world with all its imperfections
upon its head, he thinks it may be of assistance to the few
readers he can expect, to receive a short intimation of the chief
particulars, in respect of which it fails of corresponding with
his maturer views. It will thence be observed how in some
respects it fails of quadrating with the design announced by its
original title, as in others it does with that announced by the
one it bears at present.
An
introduction to a work which takes for its subject the totality
of any science, ought to contain all such matters, and such
matters only, as belong in common to every particular branch of
that science, or at least to more branches of it than one.
Compared with its present title, the present work fails in both
ways of being conformable to that rule. As an introduction to the
principles of morals, in addition to the analysis it
contains of the extensive ideas signified by the terms pleasure,
pain, motive, and disposition, it ought to have given
a similar analysis of the not less extensive, though much less
determinate, ideas annexed to the terms emotion, passion,
appetite, virtue, vice, and some others, including the names
of the particular virtues and vices. But as the
true, and, if he conceives right, the only true groundwork for
the development of the latter set of terms, has been laid by the
explanation of the former, the completion of such a dictionary,
so to style it, would, in comparison of the commencement, be
little more than a mechanical operation.
Again,
as an introduction to the principles of legislation in
general, it ought rather to have included matters belonging
exclusively to the civil branch, than matters more
particularly applicable to the penal: the latter being but
a means of compassing the ends proposed by the former. In
preference therefore, or at least in priority, to the several
chapters which will be found relative to punishment, it
ought to have exhibited a set of propositions which have since
presented themselves to him as affording a standard for the
operations performed by government, in the creation and
distribution of proprietary and other civil rights. He means
certain axioms of what may be termed mental pathology,
expressive of the connection betwixt the feelings of the
parties concerned, and the several classes of incidents, which
either call for, or are produced by, operations of the nature
above mentioned. 1 The consideration of the division
of offences, and every thing else that belongs to offences,
ought, besides, to have preceded the consideration of punishment:
for the idea of punishment presupposes the idea of
offence: punishment, as such, not being inflicted but in
consideration of offence.
Lastly,
the analytical discussions relative to the classification of
offences would, according to his present views, be transferred to
a separate treatise, in which the system of legislation is
considered solely in respect of its form: in other words, in
respect of its method and terminology.
In
these respects the performance fails of coming up to the author's
own ideas of what should have been exhibited in a work, bearing
the title he has now given it. viz., that of an Introduction
to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. He knows however
of no other that would be less unsuitable: nor in particular
would so adequate an intimation of its actual contents have been
given, by a title corresponding to the more limited design, with
which it was written: viz., that of serving as an introduction
to a penal code.
Yet
more. Dry and tedious as a great part of the discussions it
contains must unavoidably be found by the bulk of readers, he
knows not how to regret the having written them, nor even the
having made them public. Under every head, the practical uses, to
which the discussions contained under that head appeared
applicable, are indicated: nor is there, he believes, a single
proposition that he has not found occasion to build upon in the
penning of some article or other of those provisions of detail,
of which a body of law, authoritative or unauthoritative, must be
composed. He will venture to specify particularly, in this view,
the several chapters shortly characterized by the words
Sensibility, Actions, Intentionality, Consciousness, Motives,
Dispositions, Consequences.
Even
in the enormous chapter on the division of offenses, which,
notwithstanding the forced compression the plan has undergone in
several of its parts, in manner there mentioned, occupies no
fewer than one hundred and four closely printed quarto pages, the
ten concluding ones are employed in a statement of the practical
advantages that may be reaped from the plan of classification
which it exhibits. Those in whose sight the Defence of Usury
has been fortunate enough to find favour, may reckon as one
instance of those advantages the discovery of the principles
developed in that little treatise. In the preface to an anonymous
tract published so long ago as in 1776, 2 he had
hinted at the utility of a natural classification of offenses, in
the character of a test for distinguishing genuine from spurious
ones. The case of usury is one among a number of instances of the
truth of that observation. A note at the end of Sect. xxxv. chap.
xvi. of the present publication, may serve to show how the
opinions, developed in that tract, owed their origin to the
difficulty experienced in the attempt to find a place in his
system for that imaginary offense. To some readers, as a means of
helping them to support the fatigue of wading through an analysis
of such enormous length, he would almost recommend the beginning
with those ten concluding pages.
One
good at least may result from the present publication; viz., that
the more he has trespassed on the patience of the reader on this
occasion, the less need he will have so to do on future ones: so
that this may do to those, the office which is done, by books of
pure mathematics, to books of mixed mathematics and natural
philosophy. The narrower the circle of readers is, within which
the present work may be condemned to confine itself, the less
limited may be the number of those to whom the fruits of his
succeeding labours may be found accessible. He may therefore in
this respect find himself in the condition of those philosophers
of antiquity, who are represented as having held two bodies of
doctrine, a popular and an occult one: but, with this difference,
that in his instance the occult and the popular will, he hopes,
be found as consistent as in those they were contradictory; and
that in his production whatever there is of occultness has been
the pure result of sad necessity, and in no respect of choice.
Having,
in the course of this advertisement, had such frequent occasion
to allude to different arrangements, as having been suggested by
more extensive and maturer views, it may perhaps contribute to
the satisfaction of the reader, to receive a short intimation of
their nature: the rather, as, without such explanation,
references, made here and there to unpublished works, might be
productive of perplexity and mistake. The following then are the
titles of the works by the publication of which his present
designs would be completed. They are exhibited in the order which
seemed to him best fitted for apprehension, and in which they
would stand disposed, were the whole assemblage ready to come out
at once: but the order, in which they will eventually appear, may
probably enough be influenced in some degree by collateral and
temporary considerations.
Part
the 1st. Principles of legislation in matters of civil, more
distinctively termed private distributive, or for
shortness, distributive, law.
Part
the 2nd. Principles of legislation in matters of penal law.
Part
the 3rd. Principles of legislation in matters of procedure:
uniting in one view the criminal and civil
branches, between which no line can be drawn, but a very
indistinct one, and that continually liable to variation.
Part
the 4th. Principles of legislation in matters of reward.
Part
the 5th. Principles of legislation in matters of public
distributive, more concisely as well as familiarly termed
constitutional, law.
Part
the 6th. Principles of legislation in matters of political
tactics: or of the art of maintaining order in the
proceedings of political assemblies, so as to direct them to the
end of their institution: viz., by a system of rules, which are
to the constitutional branch, in some respects, what the law of
procedure is to the civil and the penal.
Part
the 7th. Principles of legislation in matters betwixt nation and
nation, or, to use a new though not inexpressive appellation, in
matters of international law.
Part
the 8th. Principles of legislation in matters of finance.
Part
the 9th. Principles of legislation in matters of political
economy.
Part
the 10th. Plan of a body of law, complete in all its branches,
considered in respect of its form; in other words, in
respect of its method and terminology; including a view of the
origination and connexion of the ideas expressed by the short
list of terms, the exposition of which contains all that can be
said with propriety to belong to the head of universal
jurisprudence.
The
use of the principles laid down under the above several heads is
to prepare the way for the body of law itself exhibited in
terminis; and which to be complete, with reference to any
political state, must consequently be calculated for the
meridian, and adapted to the circumstances, of some one such
state in particular.
Had
he an unlimited power of drawing upon time, and every
other condition necessary, it would be his wish to postpone the
publication of each part to the completion of the whole. In
particular, the use of the ten parts, which exhibit what appear
to him the dictates of utility in every line, being no other than
to furnish reasons for the several corresponding provisions
contained in the body of law itself, the exact truth of the
former can never be precisely ascertained, till the provisions,
to which they are destined to apply, are themselves ascertained,
and that in terminis. But as the infirmity of human nature
renders all plans precarious in the execution, in proportion as
they are extensive in the design, and as he has already made
considerable advances in several branches of the theory, without
having made correspondent advances in the practical applications,
he deems it more than probable, that the eventual order of
publication will not correspond exactly with that which, had it
been equally practicable, would have appeared most eligible. Of
this irregularity the unavoidable result will be, a multitude of
imperfections, which, if the execution of the body of law in
terminis had kept pace with the development of the
principles, so that each part had been adjusted and corrected by
the other, might have been avoided. His conduct however will be
the less swayed by this inconvenience, from his suspecting it to
be of the number of those in which the personal vanity of the
author is much more concerned, than the instruction of the
public: since whatever amendments may be suggested in the detail
of the principles, by the literal fixation of the provisions to
which they are relative, may easily be made in a corrected
edition of the former, succeeding upon the publication of the
latter.
In
the course of the ensuing pages, references will be found, as
already intimated, some to the plan of a penal code to which this
work was meant as an introduction, some to other branches of the
above-mentioned general plan, under titles somewhat different
from those, by which they have been mentioned here. The giving
this warning is all which it is in the author's power to do, to
save the reader from the perplexity of looking out for what has
not as yet any existence. The recollection of the change of plan
will in like manner account for several similar incongruities not
worth particularizing.
Allusion
was made, at the outset of this advertisement, to some
unspecified difficulties, as the causes of the original
suspension, and unfinished complexion, of the present work.
Ashamed of his defeat, and unable to dissemble it, he knows not
how to reface himself the benefit of such an apology as a slight
sketch of the nature of those difficulties may afford.. The
discovery of them was produced by the attempt to solve the
questions that will be found at the conclusion of the volume:
Wherein consisted the identity and completeness of a
law? What the distinction, and where the separation, between a
penal and a civil law? What the distinction, and
where the separation, between the penal and other
branches of the law?
To
give a complete and correct answer to these questions, it is but
too evident that the relations and dependencies of every part of
the legislative system, with respect to every other, must have
been comprehended and ascertained. But it is only upon a view of
these parts themselves, that such an operation could have been
performed. To the accuracy of such a survey one necessary
condition would therefore be, the complete existence of the
fabric to be surveyed. To the performance of this condition no
example is as yet to be met with any where. Common law, as
it styles itself in England, judiciary law as it might
aptly be styled every where. that fictitious composition which
has no known person for its author, no known assemblage of words
for its substance, forms every where the main body of the legal
fabric: like that fancied ether, which, in default of sensible
matter, fills up the measure of the universe. Shreds and scraps
of real law, stuck on upon that imaginary ground, compose the
furniture of every national code. What follows?— that he
who, for the purpose just mentioned or for any other, wants an
example of a complete body of law to refer to, must begin with
making one.
There
is, or rather there ought to be, a logic of the will.
as well as of the understanding: the operations of the
former faculty, are neither less susceptible, nor less worthy,
then those of the latter, of being delineated by rules. Of these
two branches of that recondite art, Aristotle saw only the
latter: succeeding logicians, treading in the steps of their
great founder, have concurred in seeing with no other eyes. Yet
so far as a difference can be assigned between branches so
intimately connected, whatever difference there is, in point of
importance, is in favour of the logic of the will. Since it is
only by their capacity of directing the operations of this
faculty, that the operations of the understanding are of any
consequence. Of this logic of the will, the science of law,
considered in respect of its form, is the most
considerable branch,— the most important application. It
is, to the art of legislation, what the science of anatomy is to
the art of medicine: with this difference, that the subject of it
is what the artist has to work with, instead of being what
he has to operate upon. Nor is the body politic less in
danger from a want of acquaintance with the one science, than the
body natural from ignorance in the other. One example, amongst a
thousand that might be adduced in proof of this assertion, may be
seen in the note which terminates this volume. Such then were the
difficulties: such the preliminaries:— an unexampled work
to achieve, and then a new science to create: a new branch to add
to one of the most abstruse of sciences.
Yet
more: a body of proposed law, how complete soever, would be
comparatively useless and uninstructive, unless explained and
justified, and that in every tittle, by a continued
accompaniment, a perpetual commentary of reasons: which reasons,
that the comparative value of such as point in opposite
directions may be estimated, and the conjunct force, of such as
point in the same direction may be felt. must be marshalled, and
put under subordination to such extensive and leading ones as are
termed principles. There must be therefore, not one system
only, but two parallel and connected systems, running on
together. the one of legislative provisions, the other of
political reasons, each affording to the other correction and
support.
Are
enterprises like these achievable? He knows not. This only he
knows, that they have been undertaken, proceeded in, and that
some progress has been made in all of them. He will venture to
add, if at all achievable, never at least by one, to whom the
fatigue of attending to discussions, as arid as those which
occupy the ensuing pages, would either appear useless, or feel
intolerable. He will repeat it boldly (for it has been said
before him), truths that form the basis of political and moral
science are not to be discovered but by investigations as severe
as mathematical ones, and beyond all comparison more intricate
and extensive. The familiarity of the terms is a presumption, but
is a most fallacious one, of the facility of the matter. Truths
in general have been called stubborn things: the truths just
mentioned are so in their own way. They are not to be forced into
detached and general propositions, unincumbered with explanations
and exceptions. They will not compress themselves into epigrams.
They recoil from the tongue and the pen of the declaimer. They
flourish not in the same soil with sentiment. They grow among
thorns; and are not to be plucked, like daisies, by infants as
they run. Labour, the inevitable lot of humanity, is in no track
more inevitable than here. In vain would an Alexander bespeak a
peculiar road for royal vanity, or a Ptolemy, a smoother one, for
royal indolence. There is no King's Road, no Stadtholder's
Gate, to legislative, any more than to mathematic science.
Chapter I: Of The
Principle of Utility
I.
Nature has placed mankind 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. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the
other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their
throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we
think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will
serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may
pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain
subject to it all the while. The principle of utility
recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation
of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of
felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt
to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice
instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.
But
enough of metaphor and declamation: it is not by such means that
moral science is to be improved.
II.
The principle of utility is the foundation of the present work:
it will be proper therefore at the outset to give an explicit and
determinate account of what is meant by it. By the principle of
utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of
every action whatsoever. according to the tendency it appears to
have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose
interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other
words to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of every
action whatsoever, and therefore not only of every action of a
private individual, but of every measure of government.
III.
By utility is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends
to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness, (all
this in the present case comes to the same thing) or (what comes
again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief,
pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is
considered: if that party be the community in general, then the
happiness of the community: if a particular individual, then the
happiness of that individual.
IV.
The interest of the community is one of the most general
expressions that can occur in the phraseology of morals: no
wonder that the meaning of it is often lost. When it has a
meaning, it is this. The community is a fictitious body,
composed of the individual persons who are considered as
constituting as it were its members. The interest of the
community then is, what is it?— the sum of the interests of
the several members who compose it.
V.
It is in vain to talk of the interest of the community, without
understanding what is the interest of the individual. A thing is
said to promote the interest, or to be for the interest,
of an individual, when it tends to add to the sum total of his
pleasures: or, what comes to the same thing, to diminish the sum
total of his pains.
VI.
An action then may be said to be conformable to then principle of
utility, or, for shortness sake, to utility, (meaning with
respect to the community at large) when the tendency it has to
augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it has
to diminish it.
VII.
A measure of government (which is but a particular kind of
action, performed by a particular person or persons) may be said
to be conformable to or dictated by the principle of utility,
when in like manner the tendency which it has to augment the
happiness of the community is greater than any which it has to
diminish it.
VIII.
When an action, or in particular a measure of government, is
supposed by a man to be conformable to the principle of utility,
it may be convenient, for the purposes of discourse, to imagine a
kind of law or dictate, called a law or dictate of utility: and
to speak of the action in question, as being conformable to such
law or dictate.
IX.
A man may be said to be a partizan of the principle of utility,
when the approbation or disapprobation he annexes to any action,
or to any measure, is determined by and proportioned to the
tendency which he conceives it to have to augment or to diminish
the happiness of the community: or in other words, to its
conformity or unconformity to the laws or dictates of utility.
X.
Of an action that is conformable to the principle of utility one
may always say either that it is one that ought to be done, or at
least that it is not one that ought not to be done. One may say
also, that it is right it should be done; at least that it is not
wrong it should be done: that it is a right action; at least that
it is not a wrong action. When thus interpreted, the words ought,
and right and wrong and others of that stamp,
have a meaning: when otherwise, they have none.
XI.
Has the rectitude of this principle been ever formally contested?
It should seem that it had, by those who have not known what they
have been meaning. Is it susceptible of any direct proof? it
should seem not: for that which is used to prove every thing
else, cannot itself be proved: a chain of proofs must have their
commencement somewhere. To give such proof is as impossible as it
is needless.
XII.
Not that there is or ever has been that human creature at
breathing, however stupid or perverse, who has not on many,
perhaps on most occasions of his life, deferred to it. By the
natural constitution of the human frame, on most occasions of
their lives men in general embrace this principle, without
thinking of it: if not for the ordering of their own actions, yet
for the trying of their own actions, as well as of those of other
men. There have been, at the same time, not many perhaps, even of
the most intelligent, who have been disposed to embrace it purely
and without reserve. There are even few who have not taken some
occasion or other to quarrel with it, either on account of their
not understanding always how to apply it, or on account of some
prejudice or other which they were afraid to examine into, or
could not bear to part with. For such is the stuff that man is
made of: in principle and in practice, in a right track and in a
wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
XIII.
When a man attempts to combat the principle of utility, it is
with reasons drawn, without his being aware of it, from that very
principle itself. His arguments, if they prove any thing, prove
not that the principle is wrong, but that, according to
the applications he supposes to be made of it, it is misapplied.
Is it possible for a man to move the earth? Yes; but he must
first find out another earth to stand upon.
XIV.
To disprove the propriety of it by arguments is impossible; but,
from the causes that have been mentioned, or from some confused
or partial view of it, a man may happen to be disposed not to
relish it. Where this is the case, if he thinks the settling of
his opinions on such a subject worth the trouble, let him take
the following steps, and at length, perhaps, he may come to
reconcile himself to it.
1.
Let him settle with himself, whether he would wish to discard
this principle altogether; if so, let him consider what it is
that all his reasonings (in matters of politics especially) can
amount to?
2. If he would, let him settle with himself,
whether he would judge and act without any principle, or whether
there is any other he would judge an act by?
3. If there be,
let him examine and satisfy himself whether the principle he
thinks he has found is really any separate intelligible
principle; or whether it be not a mere principle in words, a kind
of phrase, which at bottom expresses neither more nor less than
the mere averment of his own unfounded sentiments; that is, what
in another person he might be apt to call caprice?
4. If he
is inclined to think that his own approbation or disapprobation,
annexed to the idea of an act, without any regard to its
consequences, is a sufficient foundation for him to judge and act
upon, let him ask himself whether his sentiment is to be a
standard of right and wrong, with respect to every other man, or
whether every man's sentiment has the same privilege of being a
standard to itself?
5. In the first case, let him ask himself
whether his principle is not despotical, and hostile to all the
rest of human race?
6. In the second case, whether it is not
anarchial, and whether at this rate there are not as many
different standards of right and wrong as there are men? and
whether even to the same man, the same thing, which is right
today, may not (without the least change in its nature) be wrong
tomorrow? and whether the same thing is not right and wrong in
the same place at the same time? and in either case, whether all
argument is not at an end? and whether, when two men have said,
"I like this," and "I don't like it," they
can (upon such a principle) have any thing more to say?
7. If
he should have said to himself, No: for that the sentiment which
he proposes as a standard must be grounded on reflection, let him
say on what particulars the reflection is to turn? if on
particulars having relation to the utility of the act, then let
him say whether this is not deserting his own principle, and
borrowing assistance from that very one in opposition to which he
sets it up: or if not on those particulars, on what other
particulars?
8. If he should be for compounding the matter,
and adopting his own principle in part, and the principle of
utility in part, let him say how far he will adopt it?
9.
When he has settled with himself where he will stop, then let him
ask himself how he justifies to himself the adopting it so far?
and why he will not adopt it any farther?
10. Admitting any
other principle than the principle of utility to be a right
principle, a principle that it is right for a man to pursue;
admitting (what is not true) that the word right can have
a meaning without reference to utility, let him say whether there
is any such thing as a motive that a man can have to
pursue the dictates of it: if there is, let him say what that
motive is, and how it is to be distinguished from those which
enforce the dictates of utility: if not, then lastly let him say
what it is this other principle can be good for?
Chapter II: Of
Principles Adverse to that of Utility
I.
If the principle of utility be a right principle to be governed
by, and that in all cases, it follows from what has been just
observed, that whatever principle differs from it in any case
must necessarily be a wrong one. To prove any other principle,
therefore, to be a wrong one, there needs no more than just to
show it to be what it is, a principle of which the dictates are
in some point or other different from those of the principle of
utility: to state it is to confute it.
II.
A principle may be different from that of utility in two ways: 1.
By being constantly opposed to it: this is the case with a
principle which may be termed the principle of asceticism. 2.
By being sometimes opposed to it, and sometimes not, as it may
happen: this is the case with another, which may be termed the
principle of sympathy and antipathy.
III.
By the principle of asceticism I mean that principle, which, like
the principle of utility, approves or disapproves of any action,
according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or
diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in
question; but in an inverse manner: approving of actions in as
far as they tend to diminish his happiness; disapproving of them
in as far as they tend to augment it.
IV.
It is evident that any one who reprobates any the least particle
of pleasure, as such, from whatever source derived, is pro
tanto a partizan of the principle of asceticism. It is only
upon that principles and not from the principle of utility, that
the most abominable pleasure which the vilest of malefactors ever
reaped from his crime would be to be reprobated, if it stood
alone. The case is, that it never does stand alone; but is
necessarily followed by such a quantity of pain (or, what comes
to the same thing, such a chance for a certain quantity of pain)
that, the pleasure in comparison of it, is as nothing: and this
is the true and sole, but perfectly sufficient, reason for making
it a ground for punishment.
V.
There are two classes of men of very different complexions, by
whom the principle of asceticism appears to have been embraced;
the one a set of moralists, the other a set of religionists.
Different accordingly have been the motives which appears to have
recommended it to the notice of these different parties. Hope,
that is the prospect of pleasure, seems to have animated the
former: hope, the aliment of philosophic pride: the hope of
honour and reputation at the hands of men. Fear, that is the
prospect of pain, the latter: fear, the offspring of
superstitious fancy: the fear of future punishment at the hands
of a splenetic and revengeful Deity. I say in this case fear: for
of the invisible future, fear is more powerful than hope. These
circumstances characterize the two different parties among the
partisans of the principle of asceticism; the parties and their
motives different, the principle the same.
VI.
The religious party, however, appear to have carried it farther
than the philosophical: they have acted more consistently and
less wisely. The philosophical party have scarcely gone farther
than to reprobate pleasure: the religious party have frequently
gone so far as to make it a matter of merit and of duty to court
pain. The philosophical party have hardly gone farther than the
making pain a matter of indifference. It is no evil, they have
said: they have not said, it is a good. They have not so much as
reprobated all pleasure in the lump. They have discarded only
what they have called the gross; that is, such as are organical,
or of which the origin is easily traced up to such as are
organical: they have even cherished and magnified the refined.
Yet this, however, not under the name of pleasure: to cleanse
itself from the sordes of its impure original, it was necessary
it should change its name: the honourable, the glorious, the
reputable, the becoming, the honestum, the decorum it
was to be called: in short, any thing but pleasure.
VII.
From these two sources have flowed the doctrines from it which
the sentiments of the bulk of mankind have all along received a
tincture of this principle; some from the philosophical, some
from the religious, some from both. Men of education more
frequently from the philosophical, as more suited to the
elevation of their sentiments: the vulgar more frequently from
the superstitious, as more suited to the narrowness of their
intellect, undilated by knowledge and to the abjectness of their
condition, continually open to the attacks of fear. The
tinctures, however, derived from the two sources, would naturally
intermingle, insomuch that a man would not always know by which
of them he was most influenced: and they would often serve to
corroborate and enliven one another. It was this conformity that
made a kind of alliance between parties of a complexion otherwise
so dissimilar: and disposed them to unite upon various occasions
against the common enemy, the partizan of the principle of
utility, whom they joined in branding with the odious name of
Epicurean.
VIII.
The principle of asceticism, however, with whatever warmth it may
have been embraced by its partizans as a rule of Private conduct,
seems not to have been carried to any considerable length, when
applied to the business of government. In a few instances it has
been carried a little way by the philosophical party: witness the
Spartan regimen. Though then, perhaps, it maybe considered as
having been a measure of security: and an application, though a
precipitate and perverse application, of the principle of
utility. Scarcely in any instances, to any considerable length,
by the religious: for the various monastic orders, and the
societies of the Quakers, Dumplers, Moravians, and other
religionists, have been free societies, whose regimen no man has
been astricted to without the intervention of his own consent.
Whatever merit a man may have thought there would be in making
himself miserable, no such notion seems ever to have occurred to
any of them, that it may be a merit, much less a duty, to make
others miserable: although it should seem, that if a certain
quantity of misery were a thing so desirable, it would not matter
much whether it were brought by each man upon himself, or by one
man upon another. It is true, that from the same source from
whence, among the religionists, the attachment to the principle
of asceticism took its rise, flowed other doctrines and
practices, from which misery in abundance was produced in one man
by the instrumentality of another: witness the holy wars, and the
persecutions for religion. But the passion for producing misery
in these cases proceeded upon some special ground: the exercise
of it was confined to persons of particular descriptions: they
were tormented, not as men, but as heretics and infidels. To have
inflicted the same miseries on their fellow believers and
fellow-sectaries, would have been as blameable in the eyes even
of these religionists, as in those of a partizan of the principle
of utility. For a man to give himself a certain number of stripes
was indeed meritorious: but to give the same number of stripes to
another man, not consenting, would have been a sin. We read of
saints, who for the good of their souls, and the mortification of
their bodies, have voluntarily yielded themselves a prey to
vermin: but though many persons of this class have wielded the
reins of empire, we read of none who have set themselves to work,
and made laws on purpose, with a view of stocking the body
politic with the breed of highwaymen, housebreakers, or
incendiaries. If at any time they have suffered the nation to be
preyed upon by swarms of idle pensioners, or useless placemen, it
has rather been from negligence and imbecility, than from any
settled plan for oppressing and plundering of the people. If at
any time they have sapped the sources of national wealth, by
cramping commerce, and driving the inhabitants into emigration,
it has been with other views, and in pursuit of other ends. If
they have declaimed against the pursuit of pleasure, and the use
of wealth, they have commonly stopped at declamation: they have
not, like Lycurgus, made express ordinances for the purpose of
banishing the precious metals. If they have established idleness
by a law, it has been not because idleness, the mother of vice
and misery, is itself a virtue, but because idleness (say they)
is the road to holiness. If under the notion of fasting, they
have joined in the plan of confining their subjects to a diet,
thought by some to be of the most nourishing and prolific nature,
it has been not for the sake of making them tributaries to the
nations by whom that diet was to be supplied, but for the sake of
manifesting their own power, and exercising the obedience of the
people. If they have established, or suffered to be established,
punishments for the breach of celibacy, they have done no more
than comply with the petitions of those deluded rigorists, who,
dupes to the ambitious and deep-laid policy of their rulers,
first laid themselves under that idle obligation by a vow.
IX.
The principle of asceticism seems originally to have been the
reverie of certain hasty speculators, who having perceived, or
fancied, that certain pleasures, when reaped in certain
circumstances, have, at the long run, been attended with pains
more than equivalent to them, took occasion to quarrel with every
thing that offered itself under the name of pleasure. Having then
got thus far, and having forgot the point which they set out
from, they pushed on, and went so much further as to think it
meritorious to fall in love with pain. Even this, we see, is at
bottom but the principle of utility misapplied.
X.
The principle of utility is capable of being consistently
pursued; and it is but tautology to say, that the more
consistently it is pursued, the better it must ever be for
humankind. The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can
be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one
tenth part of the inhabitants of this earth pursue it
consistently, and in a day's time they will have turned it into a
hell.
XI.
Among principles adverse to that of utility, that which at this
day seems to have most influence in matters of government, is
what may be called the principle of sympathy and antipathy. By
the principle of sympathy and antipathy, I mean that principle
which approves or disapproves of certain actions, not on account
of their tending to augment the happiness, nor yet on account of
their tending to diminish the happiness of the party whose
interest is in question, but merely because a man finds himself
disposed to approve or disapprove of them: holding up that
approbation or disapprobation as a sufficient reason for itself,
and disclaiming the necessity of looking out for any extrinsic
ground. Thus far in the general department of morals: and in the
particular department of politics, measuring out the quantum (as
well as determining the ground) of punishment, by the degree of
the disapprobation.
XII.
It is manifest, that this is rather a principle in name than in
reality: it is not a positive principle of itself, so much as a
term employed to signify the negation of all principle. What one
expects to find in a principle is something that points out some
external consideration, as a means of warranting and guiding the
internal sentiments of approbation and disapprobation: this
expectation is but ill fulfilled by a proposition, which does
neither more nor less than hold up each of those sentiments as a
ground and standard for itself.
XIII.
In looking over the catalogue of human actions (says a partizan
of this principle) in order to determine which of them are to be
marked with the seal of disapprobation, you need but to take
counsel of your own feelings: whatever you find in yourself a
propensity to condemn, is wrong for that very reason. For the
same reason it is also meet for punishment: in what proportion it
is adverse to utility, or whether it be adverse to utility at
all, is a matter that makes no difference. In that same
proportion also is it meet for punishment: if you hate
much, punish much: if you hate little, punish little: punish as
you hate. If you hate not at all, punish not at all: the fine
feelings of the soul are not to be overborne and tyrannized by
the harsh and rugged dictates of political utility.
XIV.
The various systems that have been formed concerning the standard
of right may all be reduced to the principle of sympathy and
antipathy. One account may serve to for all of them. They consist
all of them in so many contrivances for avoiding the obligation
of appealing to any external standard, and for prevailing upon
the reader to accept of the author's sentiment or opinion as a
reason for itself. The phrases different, but the principle the
same.
XV.
It is manifest, that the dictates of this principle will
frequently coincide with those of utility, though perhaps without
intending any such thing. Probably more frequently than not: and
hence it is that the business of penal justice is carried upon
that tolerable sort of footing upon which we see it carried on in
common at this day. For what more natural or more general ground
of hatred to a practice can there be, than the mischievousness of
such practice? What all men are exposed to suffer by, all men
will be disposed to hate. It is far yet, however, from being a
constant ground: for when a man suffers, it is not always that he
knows what it is he suffers by. A man may suffer grievously, for
instance, by a new tax, without being able to trace up the cause
of his sufferings to the injustice of some neighbour, who has
eluded the payment of an old one.
XVI.
The principle of sympathy and antipathy is most apt to err on the
side of severity. It is for applying punishment in many cases
which deserve none: in many cases which deserve some, it is for
applying more than they deserve. There is no incident imaginable,
be it ever so trivial, and so remote from mischief, from which
this principle may not extract a ground of punishment. Any
difference in taste: any difference in opinion: upon one subject
as well as upon another. No disagreement so trifling which
perseverance and altercation will not render serious. Each
becomes in the other's eyes an enemy, and, if laws permit, a
criminal. This is one of the circumstances by which the human
race is distinguished (not much indeed to its advantage) from the
brute creation.
XVII.
It is not, however, by any means unexampled for this principle to
err on the side of lenity. A near and perceptible mischief moves
antipathy. A remote and imperceptible mischief, though not less
real, has no effect. Instances in proof of this will occur in
numbers in the course of the work. 4 It would be breaking in upon
the order of it to give them here.
XVIII.
It may be wondered, perhaps, that in all this no mention has been
made of the theological principle; meaning that principal
which professes to recur for the standard of right and wrong to
the will of God. But the case is, this is not in fact a distinct
principle. It is never any thing more or less than one or other
of the three before-mentioned principles presenting itself under
another shape. The will of God here meant cannot be his
revealed will, as contained in the sacred writings: for that is a
system which nobody ever thinks of recurring to at this time of
day, for the details of political administration: and even before
it can be applied to the details of private conduct, it is
universally allowed, by the most eminent divines of all
persuasions, to stand in need of pretty ample interpretations;
else to what use are the works of those divines? And for the
guidance of these interpretations, it is also allowed, that some
other standard must be assumed. The will then which is meant on
this occasion, is that which may be called the presumptive
will: that is to say, that which is presumed to be his will
by virtue of the conformity of its dictates to those of some
other principle. What then may be this other principle? it must
be one or other of the three mentioned above: for there cannot,
as we have seen, be any more. It is plain, therefore, that,
setting revelation out of the question, no light can ever be
thrown upon the standard of right and wrong, by any thing that
can be said upon the question, what is God's will. We may be
perfectly sure, indeed, that whatever is right is conformable to
the will of God: but so far is that from answering the purpose of
showing us what is right, that it is necessary to know first
whether a thing is right, in order to know from thence whether it
be conformable to the will of God.
XIX.
There are two things which are very apt to be confounded, but
which it imports us carefully to distinguish:— the motive
or cause, which, by operating on the mind of an individual, is
productive of any act: and the ground or reason which warrants a
legislator, or other bystander, in regarding that act with an eye
of approbation. When the act happens, in the particular instance
in question, to be productive of effects which we approve of,
much more if we happen to observe that the same motive may
frequently be productive, in other instances, of the like
effects, we are apt to transfer our approbation to the motive
itself, and to assume, as the just ground for the approbation we
bestow on the act, the circumstance of its originating from that
motive. It is in this way that the sentiment of antipathy has
often been considered as a just ground of action. Antipathy, for
instance, in such or such a case, is the cause of an action which
is attended with good effects: but this does not make it a right
ground of action in that case, any more than in any other. Still
farther. Not only the effects are good, but the agent sees
beforehand that they will be so. This may make the action indeed
a perfectly right action: but it does not make antipathy a right
ground of action. For the same sentiment of antipathy, if
implicitly deferred to, may be, and very frequently is,
productive of the very worst effects. Antipathy, therefore, can
never be a right ground of action. No more, therefore, can
resentment, which, as will be seen more particularly hereafter,
is but a modification of antipathy. The only right ground of
action, that can possibly subsist, is, after all, the
consideration of utility which, if it is a right principle of
actions and of approbation any one case, is so in every other.
Other principles in abundance, that is, other motives, may be the
reasons why such and such an act has been done: that is,
the reasons or causes of its being done: but it is this alone
that can be the reason why it might or ought to have been done.
Antipathy or resentment requires always to be regulated, to
prevent it doing mischief: to be regulated what? always by the
principle of utility. The principle of utility neither requires
nor admits of any another regulator than itself.
Chapter III: Of the
Four Sanctions or Sources of Pain and Pleasure
I.
It has been shown that the happiness of the individuals, of whom
a community is composed, that is their pleasures and their
security, is the end and the sole end which the legislator ought
to have in view: the sole standard, in conformity to which each
individual ought, as far as depends upon the legislator, to be
made to fashion his behaviour. But whether it be this or
any thing else that is to be done, there is nothing by
which a man can ultimately be made to do it, but either
pain or pleasure. Having taken a general view of these two grand
objects (viz., pleasure, and what comes to the same thing,
immunity from pain) in the character of final causes; it
will be necessary to take a view of pleasure and pain itself, in
the character of efficient causes or means.
II.
There are four distinguishable sources from which pleasure and
pain are in use to flow: considered separately they may be termed
the physical, the political, the moral and
the religious: and inasmuch as the pleasures and pains
belonging to each of them are capable of giving a binding force
to any law or rule of conduct, they may all of them termed
sanctions.
III.
If it be in the present life, and from the ordinary coursed of
nature, not purposely modified by the interposition of these will
of any human being, nor by any extraordinary interposition of any
superior invisible being, that the pleasure or the pain takes
place or is expected, it may be said to issue from or to belong
to the physical sanction.
IV.
If at the hands of a particular person or set of persons
in the community, who under names correspondent to that of judge,
are chosen for the particular purpose of dispensing it,
according to the will of the sovereign or supreme ruling power in
the state, it may be said to issue from the political
sanction.
V.
If at the hands of such chance persons in the community, as the
party in question may happen in the course of his life to have
concerns with, according to each man's spontaneous disposition,
and not according to any settled or concerted rule, it may be
said to issue from the moral or popular sanction.
VI.
If from the immediate hand of a superior invisible being, either
in the present life, or in a future, it may be said to issue from
the religious sanction.
VII.
Pleasures or pains which may be expected to issue from the
physical, political, or moral sanctions, must all
of them be expected to be experienced, if ever, in the present
life: those which may be expected to issue from the religious
sanction, may be expected to be experienced either in the
present life or in a future.
VIII.
Those which can be experienced in the present life, can of course
be no others than such as human nature in the course of the
present life is susceptible of: and from each of these sources
may flow all the pleasures or pains of which, in the course of
the present life, human nature is susceptible. With regard to
these then (with which alone we have in this place any concern)
those of them which belong to any one of those sanctions, differ
not ultimately in kind from those which belong to any one of the
other three: the only difference there is among them lies in the
circumstances that accompany their production. A suffering which
befalls a man in the natural and spontaneous course of things,
shall be styled, for instance, a calamity; in which case,
if it be supposed to befall him through any imprudence of his, it
may be styled a punishment issuing from the physical sanction.
Now this same suffering, if inflicted by the law, will be what is
commonly called a punishment; if incurred for want of any
friendly assistance, which the misconduct, or supposed
misconduct, of the sufferer has occasioned to be withholden, a
punishment issuing from the moral sanction; if through the
immediate interposition of a particular providence, a punishment
issuing from the religious sanction.
IX.
A man's goods, or his person, are consumed by fire. If this
happened to him by what is called an accident, it was a calamity:
if by reason of his own imprudence (for instance, from his
neglecting to put his candle out) it may be styled a punishment
of the physical sanction: if it happened to him by the sentence
of the political magistrate, a punishment belonging to the
political sanction; that is, what is commonly called a
punishment: if for want of any assistance which his neighbour
withheld from him out of some dislike to his moral
character, a punishment of the moral sanction: if by
an immediate act of God's displeasure, manifested on
account of some sin committed by him, or through any
distraction of mind, occasioned by the dread of such displeasure,
a punishment of the religious sanction.
X.
As to such of the pleasures and pains belonging to the religious
sanction, as regard a future life, of what kind these may be we
cannot know. These lie not open to our observation. During the
present life they are matter only of expectation: and, whether
that expectation be derived from natural or revealed religion,
the particular kind of pleasure or pain, if it be different from
all those which he open to our observation, is what we can have
no idea of. The best ideas we can obtain of such pains and
pleasures are altogether unliquidated in point of quality. In
what other respects our ideas of them may be liquidated
will be considered in another place.
XI.
Of these four sanctions the physical is altogether, we may
observe, the groundwork of the political and the moral: so is it
also of the religious, in as far as the latter bears relation to
the present life. It is included in each of those other three.
This may operate in any case, (that is, any of the pains or
pleasures belonging to it may operate) independently of them:
none of them can operate but by means of this. In a
word, the powers of nature may operate of themselves; but neither
the magistrate, nor men at large, can operate, nor is God
in the case in question supposed to operate, but through
the powers of nature.
XII.
For these four objects, which in their nature have so much in
common, it seemed of use to find a common name. It seemed of use,
in the first place, for the convenience of giving a name to
certain pleasures and pains, for which a name equally
characteristic could hardly otherwise have been found: in the
second place, for the sake of holding up the efficacy of certain
moral forces, the influence of which is apt not to be
sufficiently attended to. Does the political sanction exert an
influence over the conduct of mankind? The moral, the religious
sanctions do so too. In every inch of his career are the
operations of the political magistrate liable to be aided or
impeded by these two foreign powers: who, one or other of them,
or both, are sure to be either his rivals or his allies. Does it
happen to him to leave them out in his calculations? he will be
sure almost to find himself mistaken in the result. Of all this
we shall find abundant proofs in the sequel of this work. It
behoves him, therefore, to have them continually before his eyes;
and that under such a name as exhibits the relation they bear to
his own purposes and designs.
Chapter IV: Value of
a Lot of Pleasure or Pain, How to be Measured
I.
Pleasures then, and the avoidance of pains, are the ends that
the legislator has in view; it behoves him therefore to
understand their value. Pleasures and pains are the
instruments he has to work with: it behoves him therefore to
understand their force, which is again, in other words, their
value.
II.
To a person considered by himself, the value of a pleasure
or pain considered by itself, will be greater or less,
according to the four following circumstances:
1. Its
intensity.
2. Its duration.
3. Its
certainty or uncertainty.
4. Its propinquity
or remoteness.
III.
These are the circumstances which are to be considered in
estimating a pleasure or a pain considered each of them by
itself. But when the value of any pleasure or pain is considered
for the purpose of estimating the tendency of any act by
which it is produced, there are two other circumstances to be
taken into the account;
these are,
5. Its fecundity,
or the chance it has of being followed by sensations of the
same kind: that is, pleasures, if it be a pleasure: pains,
if it be a pain.
6. Its purity, or the chance it has
of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind:
that is, pains, if it be a pleasure: pleasures, if it be a pain.
These
two last, however, are in strictness scarcely to be deemed
properties of the pleasure or the pain itself; they are not,
therefore, in strictness to be taken into the account of the
value of that pleasure or that pain. They are in strictness to be
deemed properties only of the act, or other event, by which such
pleasure or pain has been produced; and accordingly are only to
be taken into the account of the tendency of such act or such
event.
IV.
To a number of persons, with reference to each of whom to
the value of a pleasure or a pain is considered, it will be
greater or less, according to seven circumstances: to wit, the
six preceding ones; viz.,
1. Its intensity.
2. Its
duration.
3. Its certainty or uncertainty.
4. Its propinquity or remoteness.
5.
Its fecundity.
6. Its purity.
And one
other; to wit:
7. Its extent; that is, the number of
persons to whom it extends; or (in other words) who are
affected by it.
V.
To take an exact account then of the general tendency of any act,
by which the interests of a community are affected, proceed as
follows. Begin with any one person of those whose interests seem
most immediately to be affected by it: and take an account,
1.
Of the value of each distinguishable pleasure which
appears to be produced by it in the first instance.
2.
Of the value of each pain which appears to be produced by
it in the first instance.
3. Of the value of each
pleasure which appears to be produced by it after the
first. This constitutes the fecundity of the first
pleasure and the impurity of the first pain.
4.
Of the value of each pain which appears to be produced by
it after the first. This constitutes the fecundity of the
first pain, and the impurity of the first pleasure.
5. Sum up all the values of all the pleasures on the
one side, and those of all the pains on the other. The balance,
if it be on the side of pleasure, will give the good tendency
of the act upon the whole, with respect to the interests of that
individual person; if on the side of pain, the bad
tendency of it upon the whole.
6. Take an account of the
number of persons whose interests appear to be concerned;
and repeat the above process with respect to each. Sum up the
numbers expressive of the degrees of good tendency, which
the act has, with respect to each individual, in regard to whom
the tendency of it is good upon the whole: do this again
with respect to each individual, in regard to whom the tendency
of it is good upon the whole: do this again with respect
to each individual, in regard to whom the tendency of it is bad
upon the whole. Take the balance which if on the side
of pleasure, will give the general good tendency of
the act, with respect to the total number or community of
individuals concerned; if on the side of pain, the general evil
tendency, with respect to the same community.
VI.
It is not to be expected that this process should be strictly
pursued previously to every moral judgment, or to every
legislative or judicial operation. It may, however, be always
kept in view: and as near as the process actually pursued on
these occasions approaches to it, so near will such process
approach to the character of an exact one.
VII.
The same process is alike applicable to pleasure and pain, in
whatever shape they appear: and by whatever denomination they are
distinguished: to pleasure, whether it be called good (which
is properly the cause or instrument of pleasure) or profit
(which is distant pleasure, or the cause or instrument of,
distant pleasure,) or convenience, or advantage,
benefit, emolument, happiness, and so forth: to pain, whether
it be called evil, (which corresponds to good) or
mischief, or inconvenience or disadvantage, or
loss, or unhappiness, and so forth.
VIII.
Nor is this a novel and unwarranted, any more than it is a
useless theory. In all this there is nothing but what the
practice of mankind, wheresoever they have a clear view of their
own interest, is perfectly conformable to. An article of
property, an estate in land, for instance, is valuable, on what
account? On account of the pleasures of all kinds which it
enables a man to produce, and what comes to the same thing the
pains of all kinds which it enables him to avert. But the value
of such an article of property is universally understood to rise
or fall according to the length or shortness of the time which a
man has in it: the certainty or uncertainty of its coming into
possession: and the nearness or remoteness of the time at which,
if at all, it is to come into possession. As to the intensity
of the pleasures which a man may derive from it, this is
never thought of, because it depends upon the use which each
particular person may come to make of it; which cannot be
estimated till the particular pleasures he may come to derive
from it, or the particular pains he may come to exclude by means
of it, are brought to view. For the same reason, neither does he
think of the fecundity or purity of those
pleasures. Thus much for pleasure and pain, happiness and
unhappiness, in general. We come now to consider the
several particular kinds of pain and pleasure.
Chapter V: Pleasures
and Pains, Their Kinds
I.
Having represented what belongs to all sorts of pleasures and
pains alike, we come now to exhibit, each by itself, the several
sorts of pains and pleasures. Pains and pleasures may be called
by one general word, interesting perceptions. Interesting
perceptions are either simple or complex. The simple ones are
those which cannot any one of them be resolved into more: complex
are those which are resolvable into divers simple ones. A complex
interesting perception may accordingly be composed either, 1. Of
pleasures alone: 2. Of pains alone: or, 3. Of a pleasure or
pleasures, and a pain or pains together. What determines a lot of
pleasure, for example, to be regarded as one complex pleasure,
rather than as divers simple ones, is the nature of the exciting
cause. Whatever pleasures are excited all at once by the action
of the same cause, are apt to be looked upon as constituting all
together but one pleasure.
II.
The several simple pleasures of which human nature is
susceptible, seem to be as follows:
1. The pleasures of
sense.
2. The pleasures of wealth.
3. The pleasures of
skill.
4. The pleasures of amity.
5. The pleasures of a
good name.
6. The pleasures of power.
7. The pleasures of
piety.
8. The pleasures of benevolence.
9. The pleasures
of malevolence.
10. The pleasures of memory.
11. The
pleasures of imagination.
12. The pleasures of expectation.
13. The pleasures dependent on association.
14. The
pleasures of relief.
III.
The several simple pains seem to be as follows:
1. The pains
of privation.
2. The pains of the senses.
3. The pains of
awkwardness.
4. The pains of enmity.
5. The pains of an
ill name.
6. The pains of piety.
7. The pains of
benevolence.
8. The pains of malevolence.
9. The pains of
the memory.
10. The pains of the imagination.
11. The
pains of expectation
12. The pains dependent on association.
IV.
1. The pleasures of sense seem to be as follows:
1. The
pleasures of the taste or palate; including whatever pleasures
are experienced in satisfying the appetites of hunger and thirst.
2. The pleasure of intoxication.
3. The pleasures of the
organ of smelling.
4. The pleasures of the touch.
5. The
simple pleasures of the ear; independent of association. 6. The
simple pleasures of the eye; independent of association.
7.
The pleasure of the sexual sense.
8. The pleasure of health:
or, the internal pleasureable feeling or flow of spirits (as it
is called), which accompanies a state of full health and vigour;
especially at times of moderate bodily exertion.
9. The
pleasures of novelty: or, the pleasures derived from the
gratification of the appetite of curiosity, by the application of
new objects to any of the senses.
V.
2. By the pleasures of wealth may be meant those pleasures which
a man is apt to derive from the consciousness of possessing any
article or articles which stand in the list of instruments of
enjoyment or security, and more particularly at the time of his
first acquiring them; at which time the pleasure may be styled a
pleasure of gain or a pleasure of acquisition: at other times a
pleasure of possession.
3.
The pleasures of skill, as exercised upon particular objects, are
those which accompany the application of such particular
instruments of enjoyment to their uses, as cannot be so applied
without a greater or less share of difficulty or exertion.
VI.
4. The pleasures of amity, or self-recommendation, are the
pleasures that may accompany the persuasion of a man's being in
the acquisition or the possession of the good-will of such or
such assignable person or persons in particular: or, as the
phrase is, of being upon good terms with him or them: and as a
fruit of it, of his being in a way to have the benefit of their
spontaneous and gratuitous services.
VII.
5. The pleasures of a good name are the pleasures that accompany
the persuasion of a man's being in the acquisition or the
possession of the good-will of the world about him; that is, of
such members of society as he is likely to have concerns with;
and as a means of it, either their love or their esteem, or both:
and as a fruit of it, of his being in the way to have the benefit
of their spontaneous and gratuitous services. These may likewise
be called the pleasures of good repute, the pleasures of honour,
or the pleasures of the moral sanction.
VIII.
6. The pleasures of power are the pleasures that accompany the
persuasion of a man's being in a condition to dispose people, by
means of their hopes and fears, to give him the benefit of their
services: that is, by the hope of some service, or by the fear of
some disservice, that he may be in the way to render them.
IX.
7. The pleasures of piety are the pleasures that accompany the
belief of a man's being in the acquisition or in possession of
the good-will or favour of the Supreme Being: and as a fruit of
it, of his being in a way of enjoying pleasures to be received by
God's special appointment, either in this life, or in a life to
come. These may also be called the pleasures of religion, the
pleasures of a religious disposition, or the pleasures of the
religious sanction.
X.
8. The pleasures of benevolence are the pleasures resulting from
the view of any pleasures supposed to be possessed by the beings
who may be the objects of benevolence; to wit, the sensitive
beings we are acquainted with; under which are commonly included,
1. The Supreme Being.
2. Human beings.
3. Other
animals. These may also be called the pleasures of good-will, the
pleasures of sympathy, or the pleasures of the benevolent or
social affections.
XI.
9. The pleasures of malevolence are the pleasures resulting from
the view of any pain supposed to be suffered by the beings who
may become the objects of malevolence: to wit, 2. Other animals.
These may also be styled the pleasures of ill-will, the pleasures
of the irascible appetite, the pleasures of antipathy, or the
pleasures of the malevolent or dissocial affections.
XII.
10. The pleasures of the memory are the pleasures which, after
having enjoyed such and such pleasures, or even in some case
after having suffered such and such pains, a man will now and
then experience, at recollecting them exactly in the order and in
the circumstances in which they were actually enjoyed or
suffered. These derivative pleasures may of course be
distinguished into as many species as there are of original
perceptions, from whence they may be copied. They may also be
styled pleasures of simple recollection.
XIII.
11. The pleasures of the imagination are the pleasures which may
be derived from the contemplation of any such pleasures as may
happen to be suggested by the memory, but in a different order,
and accompanied by different groups of circumstances. These may
accordingly be referred to any one of the three cardinal points
of time, present, past, or future. It is evident they may admit
of as many distinctions as those of the former class.
XIV.
12. The pleasures of expectation are the pleasures that result
from the contemplation of any sort of pleasure, referred to time
future, and accompanied with the sentiment of belief.
These also may admit of the same distinctions.
XV.
13. The pleasures of association are the pleasures which certain
objects or incidents may happen to afford, not of themselves, but
merely in virtue of some association they have contracted in the
mind with certain objects or incidents which are in themselves
pleasurable. Such is the case, for instance, with the pleasure of
skill, when afforded by such a set of incidents as compose a game
of chess. This derives its pleasurable quality from its
association partly with the pleasures of skill, as exercised in
the production of incidents pleasurable of themselves: partly
from its association with the pleasures of power. Such is the
case also with the pleasure of good luck, when afforded by such
incidents as compose the game of hazard, or any other game of
chance, when played at for nothing. This derives its pleasurable
quality from its association with one of the pleasures of wealth;
to wit, with the pleasure of acquiring it.
XVI.
14. Farther on we shall see pains grounded upon pleasures; in
like manner may we now see pleasures grounded upon pains. To the
catalogue of pleasures may accordingly be added the pleasures of
relief: or, the pleasures which a man experiences when,
after he has been enduring a pain of any kind for a certain time,
it comes to cease, or to abate. These may of course be
distinguished into as many species as there are of pains: and may
give rise to so many pleasures of memory, of imagination, and of
expectation.
XVII.
1. Pains of privation are the pains that may results from the
thought of not possessing in the time present any of the several
kinds of pleasures. Pains of privation may accordingly be
resolved into as many kinds as there are of pleasures to which
they may correspond, and from the absence whereof they may be
derived.
XVIII.
There are three sorts of pains which are only so many
modifications of the several pains of privation. When the
enjoyment of any particular pleasure happens to be particularly
desired, but without any expectation approaching to assurance,
the pain of privation which thereupon results takes a particular
name, and is called the pain of desire, or of unsatisfied
desire.
XIX.
Where the enjoyment happens to have been looked for with a degree
of expectation approaching to assurance, and that expectation is
made suddenly to cease, it is called a pain of disappointment.
XX.
A pain of privation takes the name of a pain of regret in two
cases:
1. Where it is grounded on the memory of a pleasure,
which having been once enjoyed, appears not likely to be enjoyed
again:
2. Where it is grounded on the idea of a pleasure,
which was never actually enjoyed, nor perhaps so much as
expected, but which might have been enjoyed (it is supposed,) had
such or such a contingency happened, which, in fact, did not
happen.
XXI.
2. The several pains of the senses seem to be as follows:
1.
The pains of hunger and thirst: or the disagreeable sensations
produced by the want of suitable substances which need at times
to be applied to the alimentary canal.
2. The pains of the
taste: or the disagreeable sensations produced by the application
of various substances to the palate, and other superior parts of
the same canal.
3. The pains of the organ of smell: or the
disagreeable sensations produced by the effluvia of various
substances when applied to that organ.
4. The pains of the
touch: or the disagreeable sensations produced by the application
of various substances to the skin.
5. The simple pains of the
hearing: or the disagreeable sensations excited in the organ of
that sense by various kinds of sounds: independently (as before,)
of association.
6. The simple pains of the sight: or the
disagreeable sensations if any such there be, that may be excited
in the organ of that sense by visible images, independent of the
principle of association.
7. The pains resulting from
excessive heat or cold, unless these be referable to the touch.
8. The pains of disease: or the acute and uneasy sensations
resulting from the several diseases and indispositions to which
human nature is liable.
9. The pain of exertion, whether
bodily or mental: or the uneasy sensation which is apt to
accompany any intense effort, whether of mind or body.
XXII.
3. The pains of awkwardness are the pains which sometimes result
from the unsuccessful endeavour to apply any particular
instruments of enjoyment or security to their uses, or from the
difficulty a man experiences in applying them.
XXIII.
4. The pains of enmity are the pains that may accompany the
persuasion of a man's being obnoxious to the ill-will of such or
such an assignable person or persons in particular: or, as the
phrase is, of being upon ill terms with him or them: and, in
consequence, of being obnoxious to certain pains of some sort or
other, of which he may be the cause.
XXIV.
5. The pains of an ill-name, are the pains that accompany the
persuasion of a man's being obnoxious, or in a way to be
obnoxious to the ill-will of the world about him. These may
likewise be called the pains of ill-repute, the pains of
dishonour, or the pains of the moral sanction.
XXV.
6. The pains of piety are the pains that accompany the belief of
a man's being obnoxious to the displeasure of the Supreme Being:
and in consequence to certain pains to be inflicted by his
especial appointment, either in this life or in a life to come.
These may also be called the pains of religion; the pains of a
religious disposition; or the pains of the religious sanction.
When the belief is looked upon as well-grounded, these pains are
commonly called religious terrors; when looked upon as
ill-grounded, superstitious terrors.
XXVI.
7. The pains of benevolence are the pains resulting from the view
of any pains supposed to be endured by other beings. These may
also be called the pains of good-will, of sympathy, or the pains
of the benevolent or social affections.
XXVII.
8. The pains of malevolence are the pains resulting from the view
of any pleasures supposed to be enjoyed by any beings who happen
to be the objects of a man's displeasure. These may also be
styled the pains of ill-will, of antipathy, or the pains of the
malevolent or dissocial affections.
XXVIII.
9. The pains of the memory may be grounded on every one of the
above kinds, as well of pains of privation as of positive pains.
These correspond exactly to the pleasures of the memory.
XXIX.
10. The pains of the imagination may also be grounded on any one
of the above kinds, as well of pains of privation as of positive
pains: in other respects they correspond exactly to the pleasures
of the imagination.
XXX.
11. The pains of expectation may be grounded on each one of the
above kinds, as well of pains of privation as of positive pains.
These may be also termed pains of apprehension.
XXXI.
12. The pains of association correspond exactly to the pleasures
of association.
XXXII.
Of the above list there are certain pleasures and pains which
suppose the existence of some pleasure or pain, of some other
person, to which the pleasure or pain of the person in question
has regard: such pleasures and pains may be termed
extra-regarding. Others do not suppose any such thing:
these may be termed self-regarding. The only pleasures and
pains of the extra-regarding class are those of benevolence and
those of malevolence: all the rest are self-regarding.
XXXIII.
Of all these several sorts of pleasures and pains, there is
scarce any one which is not liable, on more accounts than one, to
come under the consideration of the law. Is an offense committed?
It is the tendency which it has to destroy, in such or such
persons, some of these pleasures, or to produce some of these
pains, that constitutes the mischief of it, and the ground for
punishing it. It is the prospect of some of these pleasures, or
of security from some of these pains, that constitutes the motive
or temptation, it is the attainment of them that constitutes the
profit of the offense. Is the offender to be punished? It can be
only by the production of one or more of these pains, that the
punishment can be inflicted.
Chapter VI: Of
Circumstances Influencing Sensibility
I.
Pain and pleasure are produced in men's minds by the action of
certain causes. But the quantity of pleasure and pain runs not
uniformly in proportion to the cause; in other words, to the
quantity of force exerted by such cause. The truth of this
observation rests not upon any metaphysical nicety in the import
given to the terms cause, quantity, and force: it
will be equally true in whatsoever manner such force be measured.
II.
The disposition which any one has to feel such or such a quantity
of pleasure or pain, upon the application of a cause of given
force, is what we term the degree or quantum of his
sensibility. This may be either general referring to the
sum of the causes that act upon him during a given period: or
particular, referring to the action of any one particular
cause, or sort of cause.
III.
But in the same mind such and such causes of pain or pleasure
will produce more pain or pleasure than such or such other causes
of pain or pleasure: and this proportion will in different minds
be different. The disposition which any one has to have the
proportion in which he is affected by two such causes, different
from that in which another man is affected by the same two
causes, may be termed the quality or bias of his
sensibility. One man, for instance, may be most affected by the
pleasures of the taste; another by those of the ear. So also, if
there be a difference in the nature or proportion of two pains or
pleasures which they respectively experience from the same cause;
a case not so frequent as the former. From the same injury, for
instance, one man may feel the same quantity of grief and
resentment together as another man: but one of them shall feel a
greater share of grief than of resentment: the other, a greater
share of resentment than of grief.
IV.
Any incident which serves as a cause, either of pleasure or of
pain, may be termed an exciting cause: if of pleasure, a
pleasurable cause: if of pain, a painful, afflictive, or
dolorific cause.
V.
Now the quantity of pleasure, or of pain, which a man is liable
to experience upon the application of an exciting cause, since
they will not depend altogether upon that cause, will depend in
some measure upon some other circumstance or circumstances: these
circumstances, whatsoever they be, maybe termed circumstances
influencing sensibility.
VI.
These circumstances will apply differently to different exciting
causes; insomuch that to a certain exciting cause, a certain
circumstance shall not apply at all, which shall apply with great
force to another exciting cause. But without entering for the
present into these distinctions, it may be of use to sum up all
the circumstances which can be found to influence the effect of
any exciting cause. These, as on a former occasion, it may be as
well first to sum up together in the concisest manner possible,
and afterwards to allot a few words to the separate explanation
of each article. They seem to be as follows:
1. Health.
2.
Strength.
3. Hardiness.
4. Bodily imperfection.
5.
Quantity and quality of knowledge.
6. Strength of
intellectual powers.
7. Firmness of mind.
8. Steadiness
of mind.
9. Bent of inclination.
10. Moral sensibility.
11. Moral biases.
12. Religious sensibility.
13.
Religious biases.
14. Sympathetic sensibility.
15.
Sympathetic biases.
16. Antipathetic sensibility.
17.
Antipathetic biases
18. Insanity.
19. Habitual
occupations.
20. Pecuniary circumstances.
21. Connexions
in the way of sympathy.
22. Connexions in the way of
antipathy.
23. Radical frame of body.
24. Radical frame
of mind.
25. Sex.
26. Age.
27. Rank.
28.
Education.
29. Climate.
30. Lineage.
31. Government.
32. Religious profession.
VII.
1. Health is the absence of disease, and consequently of all
those kinds of pain which are among the symptoms of disease. A
man may be said to be in a state of health when he is not
conscious of any uneasy sensations, the primary seat of which can
be perceived to be anywhere in his body. In point of general
sensibility, a man who is under the pressure of any bodily
indisposition, or, as the phrase is, is in an ill state of
health, is less sensible to the influence of any pleasurable
cause, and more so to that of any afflictive one, than if he were
well.
VIII.
2. The circumstance of strength, though in point of causality
closely connected with that of health, is perfectly
distinguishable from it. The same man will indeed generally be
stronger in a good state of health than in a bad one. But one
man, even in a bad state of health, may be stronger than another
even in a good one. Weakness is a common concomitant of disease:
but in consequence of his radical frame of body, a man may be
weak all his life long, without experiencing any disease. Health,
as we have observed, is principally a negative circumstance:
strength a positive one. The degree of a man's strength can be
measured with tolerable accuracy.
IX.
3. Hardiness is a circumstance which, though closely connected
with that of strength, is distinguishable from it. Hardiness is
the absence of irritability. Irritability respects either pain,
resulting from the action of mechanical causes; or disease,
resulting from the action of causes purely physiological.
Irritability, in the former sense, is the disposition to undergo
a greater or less degree of pain upon the application of a
mechanical cause; such as are most of those applications by which
simple afflictive punishments are inflicted, as whipping,
beating, and the like. In the latter sense, it is the disposition
to contract disease with greater or less facility, upon the
application of any instrument acting on the body by its
physiological properties; as in the case of fevers, or of colds,
or other inflammatory diseases, produced by the application of
damp air: or to experience immediate uneasiness, as in the case
of relaxation or chilliness produced by an over or under
proportion of the matter of heat. Hardiness, even in the sense in
which it is opposed to the action of mechanical causes, is
distinguishable from strength. The external indications of
strength are the abundance and firmness of no the muscular
fibres: those of hardiness, in this sense, are the firmness of
the muscular fibres, and the callosity of the skin. Strength is
more peculiarly the gift of nature: hardiness, of education. Of
two persons who have had, the one the education of a gentleman,
the other, that of a common sailor, the first may be the
stronger, at the same time that the other is the hardier.
X.
4. By bodily imperfection may be understood that condition which
a person is in, who either stands distinguished by any remarkable
deformity, or wants any of those parts or faculties, which the
ordinary run of persons of the same sex and age are furnished
with: who, for instance, has a hare-lip, is deaf, or has lost a
hand. This circumstance, like that of ill-health, tends in
general to diminish more or less the effect of any pleasurable
circumstance, and to increase that of any afflictive one. The
effect of this circumstance, however, admits of great variety:
inasmuch as there are a great variety of ways in which a man may
suffer in his personal appearance, and in his bodily organs and
faculties: all which differences will be taken notice of in their
proper places.
XI.
5. So much for circumstances belonging to the condition of the
body: we come now to those which concern the condition of the
mind: the use of mentioning these will be seen hereafter. In the
first place may be reckoned the quantity and quality of the
knowledge the person in question happens to possess: that is, of
the ideas which he has actually in stores ready upon occasion to
call to mind: meaning such ideas as are in some way or other of
an interesting nature: that is, of a nature in some way or other
to influence his happiness, or that of other men. When these
ideas are many, and of importance, a man is said to be a man of
knowledge; when few, or not of importance, ignorant.
XII.
6. By strength of intellectual powers may be understood the
degree of facility which a man experiences in his endeavours to
call to mind as well such ideas as have been already aggregated
to his stock of knowledge, as any others, which, upon any
occasion that may happen, he may conceive a desire to place
there. It seems to be on some such occasion as this that the
words parts and talents are commonly employed. To
this head may be referred the several qualities of readiness of
apprehension, accuracy and tenacity of memory, strength of
attention, clearness of discernment, amplitude of comprehension,
vividity and rapidity of imagination. Strength of intellectual
powers, in general, seems to correspond pretty exactly to general
strength of body: as any of these qualities in particular does to
particular strength.
XIII.
7. Firmness of mind on the one hand, and irritability on the
other, regard the proportion between the degrees of efficacy with
which a man is acted upon by an exciting cause, of which the
value lies chiefly in magnitude, and one of which the value lies
chiefly in propinquity. A man may be said to be of a firm mind,
when small pleasures or pains, which are present or near, do not
affect him, in a greater proportion to their value, than greater
pleasures or pains, which are uncertain or remote; Of an
irritable mind, when the contrary is the case.
XIV.
8. Steadiness regards the time during which a given exciting
cause of a given value continues to affect a man in nearly the
same manner and degree as at first, no assignable external event
or change of circumstances intervening to make an alteration in
its force.
XV.
9. By the bent of a man's inclinations may be understood the
propensity he has to expect pleasure or pain from certain
objects, rather than from others. A man's inclinations may be
said to have such or such a bent, when, amongst the several sorts
of objects which afford pleasure in some degree to all men, he is
apt to expect more pleasure from one particular sort, than from
another particular sort, or more from any given particular sort,
than another man would expect from that sort; or when, amongst
the several sorts of objects, which to one man afford pleasure,
whilst to another they afford none, he is apt to expect, or not
to expect, pleasure from an object of such or such a sort: so
also with regard to pains. This circumstance, though intimately
connected with that of the bias of a man's sensibility, is not
undistinguishable from it. The quantity of pleasure or pain,
which on any given occasion a man may experience from an
application of any sort, may be greatly influenced by the
expectations he has been used to entertain of pleasure or pain
from that quarter; but it will not be absolutely determined by
them: for pleasure or pain may come upon him from a quarter from
which he was not accustomed to expect it.
XVI.
10. The circumstances of moral, religious, sympathetic, and
antipathetic sensibility, when closely considered, will
appear to be included in some sort under that of bent of
inclination. On account of their particular importance they
may, however, be worth mentioning apart. A man's moral
sensibility may be said to be strong, when the pains and
pleasures of the moral sanction show greater in his eyes, in
comparison with other pleasures and pains (and consequently exert
a stronger influence) than in the eyes of the persons he is
compared with; in other words, when he is acted on with more than
ordinary efficacy by the sense of honour: it may be said to be
weak, when the contrary is the case. <
XVII.
11. Moral sensibility seems to regard the average effect or
influence of the pains and pleasures of the moral sanction, upon
all sorts of occasions to which it is applicable, or happens to
be applied. It regards the average force or quantity of
the impulses the mind receives from that source during a given
period. Moral bias regards the particular acts on which,
upon so many particular occasions, the force of that sanction is
looked upon as attaching. It regards the quality or
direction of those impulses. It admits of as many varieties,
therefore, as there are dictates which the moral sanction may be
conceived to issue forth. A man may be said to have such or such
a moral bias, or to have a moral bias in favour of such or
such an action, when he looks upon it as being of the number of
those of which the performance is dictated by the moral sanction.
XVIII. 12. What has been said with regard to moral
sensibility, may be applied, mutatis mutandis, to
religious.
XIX.
13. What has been said with regard to moral biases, may also be
applied, mutatis mutandis, to religious biases.
XX.
14. By sympathetic sensibility is to be understood the propensity
that a man has to derive pleasure from the happiness, and pain
from the unhappiness, of other sensitive beings. It is the
stronger, the greater the ratio of the pleasure or pain he feels
on their account is to that of the pleasure or pain which
(according to what appears to him) they feel for themselves.
XXI.
15. Sympathetic bias regards the description of the parties who
are the objects of a man's sympathy: and of the acts or other
circumstances of or belonging to those persons, by which the
sympathy is excited. These parties may be,
1. Certain
individuals.
2. Any subordinate class of ind |
