The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches-2 [81]
and most useful of all the works of the human reason, the Novum Organum, we will transcribe a few lines, in which the Utilitarian philosophy is portrayed to the life. "Syllogismus ad 'Principia' scientiarum non adhibetur, ad media axiomata frustra adhibetur, cum sit subtilitati naturae longe impar. Assensum itaque constringit, non res. Syllogismus ex propositionibus constat, propositiones ex verbis, verba notionum tesserae sunt. Itaque si notiones ipsae, id quod basis rei est, confusae sint, et tenere a rebus abstractae, nihil in iis quae superstruuntur est firmitudinis. Itaque spes est una in Inductione vera. In notionibus nil sani est, nec in Logicis nec in physicis. Non substantia, non qualitas, agere, pati, ipsum esse, bonae notiones sunt; multo minus grave, leve, densum, tenue, humidum, siccum, generatio, corruptio, attrahere, fugare, elementum, materia, forma, et id genus, sed omnes phantasticae et male terminatae." Substitute for the "substantia," the "generatio," the "corruptio," the "elementum," the "materia," of the old schoolmen, Mr Mill's pain, pleasure, interest, power, objects of desire,--and the words of Bacon will seem to suit the current year as well as the beginning of the seventeenth century. We have now gone through the objections that Mr Bentham makes to our article: and we submit ourselves on all the charges to the judgment of the public. The rest of Mr Bentham's article consists of an exposition of the Utilitarian principle, or, as he decrees that it shall be called, the "greatest happiness principle." He seems to think that we have been assailing it. We never said a syllable against it. We spoke slightingly of the Utilitarian sect, as we thought of them, and think of them; but it was not for holding this doctrine that we blamed them. In attacking them we no more meant to attack the "greatest happiness principle" than when we say that Mahometanism is a false religion we mean to deny the unity of God, which is the first article of the Mahometan creed;--no more than Mr Bentham, when he sneers at the Whigs means to blame them for denying the divine right of kings. We reasoned throughout our article on the supposition that the end of government was to produce the greatest happiness to mankind. Mr Bentham gives an account of the manner in which he arrived at the discovery of the "greatest happiness principle." He then proceeds to describe the effects which, as he conceives, that discovery is producing in language so rhetorical and ardent that, if it had been written by any other person, a genuine Utilitarian would certainly have thrown down the book in disgust. "The only rivals of any note to the new principle which were brought forward, were those known by the names of the 'moral sense,' and the 'original contract.' The new principle superseded the first of these, by presenting it with a guide for its decisions; and the other, by making it unnecessary to resort to a remote and imaginary contract for what was clearly the business of every man and every hour. Throughout the whole horizon of morals and of politics, the consequences were glorious and vast. It might be said without danger of exaggeration, that they who sat in darkness had seen a great light. The mists in which mankind had jousted against each other were swept away, as when the sun of astronomical science arose in the full development of the principle of gravitation. If the object of legislation was the greatest happiness, MORALITY was the promotion of the same end by the conduct of the individual; and by analogy, the happiness of the world was the morality of nations. "...All the sublime obscurities, which had haunted the mind of man from the first formation of society,--the phantoms whose steps had been on earth, and their heads among the clouds-- marshalled themselves at the sound of this new principle of connection and of union, and stood a regulated band, where all was order, symmetry, and force. What men had struggled for and bled, while they saw it but as through a glass darkly, was made the object of substantial knowledge