pain the only evil. But like Epicurus he valued moderate pleasure most. He thought intellectual
enjoyments the best and temperance the chief virtue. "The intense was with him a bye-word of
scornful disapprobation," says his son, who adds that he objected to the modern stress laid upon
feeling. Like the whole utilitarian school, he was utterly opposed to every form of romanticism.
He thought politics could be governed by reason, and expected men's opinions to be determined
by the weight of evidence. If opposing sides in a controversy are presented with equal skill, there
is a moral certaintyso he held--that the greater number will judge right. His outlook was limited by
the poverty of his emotional nature, but within his limitations he had the merits of industry,
disinterestedness, and rationality.
His son John Stuart Mill, who was born in 1808, carried on a somewhat softened form of the
Benthamite doctrine to the time of his death in 1873.
Throughout the middle portion of the nineteenth century, the influence of the Benthamites on
British legislation and policy was astonishingly great, considering their complete absence of
emotional appeal.
Bentham advanced various arguments in favour of the view that the general happiness is the
summum bonum. Some of these arguments were acute criticisms of other ethical theories. In his
treatise on political sophisms he says, in language which seems to anticipate Marx, that
sentimental and ascetic moralities serve the interests of the governing class, and are the product of
an aristocratic régime. Those who teach the morality of sacrifice, he continues, are not victims
of error: they want others to sacrifice to them. The moral order, he says, results from equilibrium
of interests. Governing corporations pretend that there is already identity of interests between the
governors and the governed, but reformers make it clear that this identity does not yet exist, and
try to bring it about. He maintains that only the principle of utility can give a criterion in morals
and legislation, and lay the foundation of a social science. His main positive argument in favour of
his principle is that it is really implied by apparently different ethical systems. This, however, is
only made plausible by a severe restriction of his survey.
There is an obvious lacuna in Bentham's system. If every man always pursues his own pleasure,
how are we to secure that the legis-