3 40 , 5&AA/YVO AJWrtYO B44Y5, PHILOSOPHY ' c^q> . I olF £u>,

was essentially identical with the one taken up by Hobbes. For a time, indeed, Hobbes was submerged in the flood of turgid eloquence that poured down from the clouds of hazy Intellectualism ; but, with the advent of a drier season, the old rock of Malmesbury was once more laid open to view, none the worse for all the freshes, Intellectual and Sentimental ; only, thanks to the labours of others than theorizers, the despotism of an irresponsible autocrat had given place, in the meantime, to the no less pronounced despotism of a many -headed majority. Not only in the conclusions reached but also in first principles, Bentham is at one with Hobbes. The statement in which he announces his final analysis of human motives has, through repeated reference, almost become classical. “ Nature,” he says, “has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what b 40 31 2 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 chair of causes and effects are fastened to their throne. They govern u 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.” Can Egoism go further ? It would appear, then, tha according to both Hobbes and Bentham it is as much a physica impossibility for man to seek anything but his own interest as for rivers to flow backwards to their sources Yet Bentham is an Altruist in Ethics. He is never tired of telling us that the end o f morality is the production of Happiness, not to oneself, but to the community at large. In fact, the familiar expression, ‘ the greatest happiness of the greatest number owes all its currency to his powerful advocacy. What, then, is the explanation ? On the one hand, we are told that we can have no motive to consult any interest but our own ; that even the effort we make to throw of the tyranny of selfishness will serve but to demonstrate and con firm it. On the other hand we are told that Bight Conduct is Fwhat produces the greatest happiness, not to us individually, ;jbut to the greatest number. How, then, is this unrelenting Egoism in Psychology to be combined with such extensive Altruism in Ethics ? Bentham himself gives us no clear clue, so we are thrown back on our resources in seeking to find a way out of the riddle. In the first place, it is possible to suppose that Bentham believed that individual happiness was best secured by ensuring the greatest happiness of the greatest number : and therefore when an indi- vidual strives after the altruistic ethical end he need in reality have nothing more than egoistic impulses to prompt him. Though it cannot be denied that this sentiment appears in his posthumous publications, Bentham was too practical a man to be led away by a visionary belief in any such thorough-going coincidence. The great reformer of penal legislation was not likely to have enter- tained a belief that would render punishment itself groundless, . since no man would require a counter- motive to keep him in the, right path, if right path and private interests so naturally coin-; cided. Even with the artificial considerations raised by Penal Institutes, the coincidence is so little felt that Dr. Bain seriously asks those who pursue their own happiness to have their “ associa- tions with duty only in a moderate degree of strength It is hard, therefore, to believe that Bentham depended for the solution of the. ( : 3 fundamental difficulty of his system on the delusive notion that private interests and public, happiness invariably coincided. As for Paley's resort to a world other than the present, Bentham spurns it as absurdly unscientific. No doubt, again, he speaks of the pleasures of benevolence, but he is too good a psychologist not to note that there are pains of benevolence and pleasures of male- volence as well, and too consistent a hedonist to allow any superi- ority to the pleasures of benevolence over the latter, directly in contravention of his own dictum equating ‘ pushpin ' and ‘ poetry '. There would thus seem to be no way of reconciling Bentham's Egoistic Psychology with his Altruistic Ethics, except by falling back upon the theory of Hobbes that the happiness of the commu- nity is no concern of the individual, but of the State only, which, being the stronger of the two, coerces the former nolens volenti to contribute to its own end. Morality is then with Bentham as much the creation of the State as it was with Hobbes, though not equally arbitrary. Bentham’s account of ethical sanctions confirms this view of the question. The word ‘sanction' is his own invention, and it is paraphrased as a source of pleasure or pain which stimulates right conduct. He enumerates four such sanctions, physical, political, moral, and religious, of which the first and the last are obviously of limited application. The natural effects of prudence or imprud- ence on one's own constitution can be called an ethical sanction only by way of courtesy, while the dispensations of an Invisible Being can have influence, Bentham points out, only with believers in a religion. Of the remaining two, the second, or the political sanction, consisting of the punishments and rewards awarded by government, is by far the more important. It is declared by Bentham to be the most efficacious, as being certain, definite, uniform, and universal in its operation. The third, or what is called the moral sanction, is made up of the informal penalties imposed by society, and is regarded by the author only as a sort of nebulous photosphere enveloping the second. It is vain to seek among these sanctions for any real internal feeling of obligation which common parlance and true psychology would alike specify as the essence of conscience. They are all 1 violent motives' in the language of Paley, arising from sheer external coercion. Thus, then, do we seem to be returning by a new path to the old position of Hobbes. T he Sta te, whether regarded as a joint-stock company or a mortal God, is after all the final source of morality, ft is from the stand- 4 point of the State that ‘ the greatest happiness of the greatest number * becomes a desirable object : aud but for the violent motives supplied by the State or the community, in the form either of crystallized statutes or of amorphous public opinion, no indivi- dual would care to contribute to the attainment of that desirable object. is true Bentham takes great pains to distinguish the province of Ethics, or, as he would say, f Private Ethics ’ , from that of Legislation. They are both said to have the same object in view, the greatest happiness of the greatest number. They agree further in prompting generally the same course of con- duct. The only difference that Bentham recognises lies in their respective sanctions. Where the political sanction proves unpro- fitable, as when the crime is incapable of precise definition or easy detection, it makes room for the social one, and so issues the code of Private Ethics as a sort of supplement to the Statute-Book. This is the line of division that Bentham proposes between Law and Morals, and it is for this that he has been so much lauded by his followers. But it must be clear from what has been already said that the distinction, though useful to the legislator, is practically of no avail to the moralist. What Bentham calls Private Ethics is still not sufficiently private to be the direct concern of the indivi- dual. In either case, the greatest happiness of the greatest num- ber is the aim only of the joint-stock company called society, which, being infinitely stronger, imposes its own end upon the individual, who to the last remains incapable of pursuing anything but his own pleasure. The cunning contrivances adopted by society to im- press the helpless individual into its service, may range, on the one hand, from the silken garter to the hempen halter, and on the other, from the first place at the dinner table to solitude in the danc- ing hall ; but the difference remains only one of means, and not of end, one of degree and not of kind. As with Hobbes, so with Bentham, the individual as such is no moral agent. Nay, in one res- pect Bentham is worse than Hobbes. The latter allowed us at least certain ‘ laws of nature eternal and immutable, binding upon our thoughts, though not upon our acts ; but with Bentham, the whole internal moral nature of man is as a blank. The more candid of his admirers have long recognised this fact. “ The feeling,” says J. S. Mill, “of moral approbation or disapprobation, properly so called, either towards ourselves or our fellow creatures, he seems unaware of the existence of ; and neither the word self-respect, nor the idea to which that word is appropriated, occurs even once, so 5 far as our recollection serves us, in his whole writings.” Again the same great utilitarian writes : “ Morality consists of two parts. Oue A of these is self-education • the training, by the human being himself, of his affections and will. That department is a blank in BenthanTs system. The other and co-equal part, the regulation of his outward actions, must be altogether halting and imperfect without the first ; for how can we judge in what manner many an action will affect even the worldly interests of ourselves or others, unless we take in, as part of the question, its influence on the regulation of our, or their, affections and desires ? ” But with Bentham as with Hobbes and all other ambitious system-builders, the charm of simplicity proves too strong. The complex mechanism of the human heart never attracts the least attention. Men are kept oscillating through the single spring of self-interest, and morality consists in so arranging the wheels of government and the pinions of public opinion as to compress that self-same spring whenever it leads one to collide with another. Hence we find Be^hajm-ignoring the real ethical value of even such motive^ as he occasionally takes up for examination. For ex- ample, looking for suitable props to self-interest, he singles out for special honour benevolence, love of reputation, amity, and religious- ness, and calls them f tutelary motives^ But even here the ground of the distinction is not their intrinsic moral worth for the agent, but their being unconscious promoters of the object of the joint- stock company outside. In short, the so-called guardian angels are but cunning spies in the heart of the unsuspecting individual, and they are honoured for being such ! Thus from all points of view, we reach the conclusion that Ben- tham is no advance upon Hobbes so far as the essential questions of Ethics are concerned. Both start with the single principle of self- interest, and both find it in consequence necessary to make on morality to be a product of the State, imposed upon the individua by external compulsion. But time seldom flies in vain, and th eminent men that mark its progress have each a particular mission to fulfil. We do not refer here to the vast improvement which Bentham’s conception of the State shows upon that of the old monarchist of Malmesbury. Great and important as that was, it does not specially fall to the lot of Ethics to chronicle the change, even supposing Bentham had a hand in bringing it about. The achievement for which Ethics is likely to remember him is the complete demonstration he has given of the extremely felicific social 6 consequences of individual moral conduct. Some early writers like Cumberland had already stumbled on this truth, and Hume with his usual philosophic insight had even sought to raise out of it a distinctly ethical theory. But all these previous notices of the utility of morality were more or less in the fashion of speculation, and not in the spirit of earnest and exact science. It is not without reason, therefore, that Bentham has come to be considered so dis- tinctly the type of utilitarianism, though the idea and even the expression occur often in Hume. In Morals as well as in Law, Bentham was the reformer. His object was not to apologize for current moral notions by considerations of public utility, but to correct them into conformity with that standard. Here lies the real advance upon Hobbes. The utilitarian, while agreeing with the monarchist that morality is a creation of the State, maintains at the same time that it has a reason of its own for existence, altogether independent of that creative fiat. It i s an institution of society but no longer an arbitrary institution. The f mortal G-od 5 of Hobbes, when resuscitated by Bentham, proves fallible as well, and bound also to conform to a standard of rectitude in common with those over whom it bears rule. Bound ? Yes, veritably bound ! Otherwise what can be the meaning of f utility 5 being the standard, instead of its own word of command ? u But who can bind the Leviathan whose word binds all That really is the ethical shirt which stirs the tragic fury of our herculean jurist, lu the whole of Ethics, there is no notion more fundamental than the idea of moral obligation, aud Bentham never approaches that notion except in a state of exasperation. He can well understand what it is to be bribed or whipped into moral- ity by the hope of reward or the fear of punishment; but a dis- interested tone of rectitude, an autonomous categorical imperative, regulating, not our external conduct, but the innermost of our thoughts and feelings, is an empty sound with him, nay, an im- possiblity in his psychology. Hence his rage against the innocent word ‘ought 5 , which, our moralist says, can be legitimately used only in one connection, viz., in^ declaring that it ought to be abol- ished from the English vocabulary ! But even when the word is abolished, slaughtered and slain, the spirit of it, its ghost, persists in hanging about him ; his very shirt is drenched in its blood. Having prescribed a standard other than their self-sufficing word of command, Bentham is bound to show some reason for the author- ities themselves paying any respect to that standard. Nay, the 7 difficulty lies deeper. According to the traditional psychology of his school, it is a literal impossibility for the individual to seek anything but his own pleasure ; and yet the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the end of morality. Unless the individual consciously and directly entertains the end in view, it is hard to conceive bow he can be regarded as a moral being, however much he may be compelled to contribute towards it through the sheer force of external authority. Either, therefore, the individual by entertaining the end gives the lie to the psychology of the school, or, sticking to the psychology, he remains to the last as morally colourless as any physical force which the community, by suitable manipulation, may turn to its own advantage. Such is the inevit- able contradiction involved in all attempts to combine Egoism in Psychology with Altruism in Ethics ; and the credit of having exhibited it for the first time, or at any rate, in the most telling way possible, belongs to Bentham. Both in itself and in the re-ad- justments which it necessitated in subsequent speculation, this was a service not less remarkable nor less fertile than his cleansing the Augean stables of Law. P. SlJNDARAM PlLLAI.