i need a very good work

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS AND LEGISLATION

by Jeremy Bentham

1781

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[1] 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[2] 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[3] 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.[4] 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 

to-day, may not (without the least change in its nature) be wrong to-morrow? 

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?

1. Note by the Author, July 1822.

To this denomination has of late been added, or substituted, the greatest 

happiness or greatest felicity principle: this for shortness, instead of 

saying at length that principle which states the greatest happiness of all 

those whose interest is in question, as being the right and proper, and only 

right and proper and universally desirable, end of human action: of human 

action in every situation, and in particular in that of a functionary or set 

of functionaries exercising the powers of Government. The word utility does 

not so clearly point to the ideas of pleasure and pain as the words 

happiness and felicity do: nor does it lead us to the consideration of the 

number, of the interests affected; to the number, as being the circumstance, 

which contributes, in the largest proportion, to the formation of the 

standard here in question; the standard of right and wrong, by which alone 

the propriety of human conduct, in every situation, can with propriety be 

tried. This want of a sufficiently manifest connexion between the ideas of 

happiness and pleasure on the one hand, and the idea of utility on the 

other, I have every now and then found operating, and with but too much 

efficiency, as a bar to the acceptance, that might otherwise have been 

given, to this principle. 

2. The word principle is derived from the Latin principium: which seems to 

be compounded of the two words primus, first, or chief, and cipium a 

termination which seems to be derived from capio, to take, as in mancipium, 

municipium; to which are analogous, auceps, forceps, and others. It is a 

term of very vague and very extensive signification: it is applied to any 

thing which is conceived to serve as a foundation or beginning to any series 

of operations: in some cases, of physical operations; but of mental 

operations in the present case.

The principle here in question may be taken for an act of the mind; a 

sentiment; a sentiment of approbation; a sentiment which, when applied to an 

action, approves of its utility, as that quality of it by which the measure 

of approbation or disapprobation bestowed upon it ought to be governed.

3. Interest is one of those words, which not having any superior genus, 

cannot in the ordinary way be defined.

4. "The principle of utility, (I have heard it said) is a dangerous 

principle: it is dangerous on certain occasions to consult it." This is as 

much as to say, what? that it is not consonant to utility, to consult 

utility: in short, that it is not consulting it, to consult it.

Addition by the Author, July 1822.

Not long after the publication of the Fragment on Government, anno 1776, in 

which, in the character of all-comprehensive and all-commanding principle 

the principle of utility was brought to view, one person by whom observation 

to the above effect was made was Alexander Wedderburn, at that time Attorney 

or Solicitor General, afterwards successively Chief Justice of the Common 

Pleas, and Chancellor of England, under the successive titles of Lord 

Loughborough and Earl of Rosslyn. It was made -- not indeed in my hearing, 

but in the hearing of a person by whom it was almost immediately 

communicated to me. So far from being self-contradictory, it was a shrewd 

and perfectly true one. By that distinguished functionary, the state of the 

Government was thoroughly understood: by the obscure individual, at that 

time not so much as supposed to be so: his disquisitions had not been as yet 

applied, with any thing like a comprehensive view, to the field of 

Constitutional Law, nor therefore to those features of the English 

Government, by which the greatest happiness of the ruling one with or 

without that of a favoured few, are now so plainly seen to be the only ends 

to which the course of it has at any time been directed. The principle of 

utility was an appellative, at that time employed by me, as it had been by 

others, to designate that which, in a more perspicuous and instructive 

manner, may, as above, be designated by the name of the greatest happiness 

principle. "This principle (said Wedderburn) is a dangerous one." Saying so, 

he said that which, to a certain extent, is strictly true: a principle, 

which lays down, as the only right and justifiable end of Government, the 

greatest happiness of the greatest number -- how can it be denied to be a 

dangerous one? dangerous it unquestionably is, to every government which has 

for its actual end or object, the greatest happiness of a certain one, with 

or without the addition of some comparatively small number of others, whom 

it is matter of pleasure or accommodation to him to admit, each of them, to 

a share in the concern, on the footing of so many junior partners. Dangerous 

it therefore really was, to the interest -- the sinister interest -- of all 

those functionaries, himself included, whose interest it was, to maximize 

delay, vexation, and expense, in judicial and other modes of procedure, for 

the sake of the profit, extractible out of the expense. In a Government 

which had for its end in view the greatest happiness of the greatest number, 

Alexander Wedderburn might have been Attorney General and then Chancellor: 

but he would not have been Attorney General with £15,000 a year, nor 

Chancellor, with a peerage with a veto upon all justice, with £25,000 a 

year, and with 500 sinecures at his disposal, under the name of 

Ecclesiastical Benefices, besides et cæteras. 

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.[1] 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 human-kind. 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.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5] 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.[6] 

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 by-stander, 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.

1. Ascetic is a term that has been sometimes applied to Monks. It comes from 

a Greek word which signifies exercise. The practices by which Monks sought 

to distinguish themselves from other men were called their Exercises. These 

exercises consisted in so many contrivances they had for tormenting 

themselves. By this they thought to ingratiate themselves with the Deity. 

For the Deity. said they, is a Being of infinite benevolence: now a Being of 

the most ordinary benevolence is pleased to see others make themselves as 

happy as they can: therefore to make ourselves as unhappy as we can is the 

way to please the Deity. If any body asked them, what motive they could find 

for doing all this? Oh! said they, you are not to imagine that we are 

punishing ourselves for nothing: we know very well what we are about. You 

are to know, that for every grain of pain it costs us now, we are to have a 

hundred grains of pleasure by and by. The case is, that God loves to see us 

torment ourselves at present: indeed he has as good as told us so. But this 

is done only to try us, in order just to see how we should behave: which it 

is plain he could not know, without making the experiment. Now then, from 

the satisfaction it gives him to see us make ourselves as unhappy as we can 

make ourselves in this present life, we have a sure proof of the 

satisfaction it will give him to see us as happy as he can make us in a life 

to come.

2. The following Note was first printed in January 1789. 

It ought rather to have been styled, more extensively, the principle of 

caprice. Where it applies to the choice of actions to be marked out for 

injunction or prohibition, for reward or punishment, (to stand, in a word, 

as subjects for obligations to be imposed,) it may indeed with propriety be 

termed, as in the text, the principle of sympathy and antipathy. But this 

appellative does not so well apply to it, when occupied in the choice of the 

events which are to serve as sources of title with respect to rights: where 

the actions prohibited and allowed the obligations and rights, being already 

fixed, the only question is, under what circumstances a man is to be 

invested with the one or subjected to the other? from what incidents 

occasion is to be taken to invest a man, or to refuse to invest him, with 

the one, or to subject him to the other? In this latter case it may more 

appositely be characterized by the name of the phantastic principle. 

Sympathy and antipathy are affections of the sensible faculty. But the 

choice of titles with respect to rights, especially with respect to 

proprietary rights, upon grounds unconnected with utility, has been in many 

instances the work not of the affections but of the imagination.

When, in justification of an article of English Common Law calling uncles to 

succeed in certain cases in preference to fathers, Lord Coke produced a sort 

of ponderosity he had discovered in rights, disqualifying them from 

ascending in a straight line, it was not that he loved uncles particularly, 

or hated fathers, but because the analogy, such as it was, was what his 

imagination presented him with, instead of a reason, and because, to a 

judgment unobservant of the standard of utility, or unacquainted with the 

art of consulting it, where affection is out of the way, imagination is the 

only guide.

When I know not what ingenious grammarian invented the proposition Delegatus 

non potest delegare, to serve as a rule of law, it was not surely that he 

had any antipathy to delegates of the second order, or that it was any 

pleasure to him to think of the ruin which, for want of a manager at home, 

may befall the affairs of a traveller whom an unforeseen accident has 

deprived of the object of his choice: it was, that the incongruity, of 

giving the same law to objects so contrasted as active and passive are, was 

not to be surmounted, and that -atus chimes, as well as it contrasts, with 

-are.

When that inexorable maxim, (of which the dominion is no more to be defined, 

than the date of its birth, or the name of its father, is to be found) was 

imported from England for the government of Bengal, and the whole fabric of 

judicature was crushed by the thunders of ex post facto justice, it was not 

surely that the prospect of a blameless magistracy perishing in prison 

afforded any enjoyment to the unoffended authors of their misery; but that 

the music of the maxim, absorbing the whole imagination, had drowned the 

cries of humanity along with the dictates of common sense.[7] Fiat Justitia, 

ruat coelum, says another maxim, as full of extravagance as it is of 

harmony: Go heaven to wreck -- so justice be but done: -- and what is the 

ruin of kingdoms, in comparison of the wreck of heaven?

So again, when the Prussian chancellor, inspired with the wisdom of I know 

not what Roman sage, proclaimed in good Latin, for the edification of German 

ears, Servitus servitutis non datur, [Cod. Fred. tom. ii. par. 2. liv. 2. 

tit. x. §6. p. 308.] it was not that he had conceded any aversion to the 

life-holder who, during the continuance of his term, should wish to gratify 

a neighbour with a right of way or water, or to the neighbour who should 

wish to accept of the indulgence; but that, to a jurisprudential ear, -tus 

-tutis sound little less melodious than -atus -are. Whether the melody of 

the maxim was the real reason of the rule, is not left open to dispute for 

it is ushered in by the conjunction quia, reason's appointed harbinger quia 

servitus servitutis non datur.

Neither would equal melody have been produced, nor indeed could similar 

melody have been called for, in either of these instances, by the opposite 

provision: it is only when they are opposed to general rules, and not when 

by their conformity they are absorbed in them, that more specific ones can 

obtain a separate existence. Delegatus potest delegare, and Servitus 

servitutis datur, provisions already included under the general adoption of 

contracts, would have been as unnecessary to the apprehension and the 

memory, as, in comparison of their energetic negatives, they are insipid to 

the ear. 

Were the inquiry diligently made, it would be found that the goddess of 

harmony has exercised more influence, however latent, over the dispensations 

of Themis, than her most diligent historiographers, or even her most 

passionate panegyrists, seem to have been aware of. Every one knows, how, by 

the ministry of Orpheus, it was she who first collected the sons of men 

beneath the shadow of the sceptre: yet, in the midst of continual 

experience, men seem yet to learn, with what successful diligence she has 

laboured to guide it in its course. Every one knows, that measured numbers 

were the language of the infancy of law: none seem to have observed with 

what imperious sway they have governed her maturer age. In English 

jurisprudence in particular, the connexion betwixt law and music, however 

less perceived than in Spartan legislation, is not perhaps less real nor 

less close. The music of the Office, though not of the same kind, is not 

less musical its kind, than the music of the Theatre; that which hardens the 

heart, than that which softens it: -- sostenutos as long, cadences as 

sonorous; and those governed by rules, though not yet promulgated, not less 

determinate. Search indictments, pleadings, proceedings in chancery, 

conveyances: whatever trespasses you may find against truth or common sense 

you will find none against the laws of harmony. The English Liturgy justly 

as this quality has been extolled in that sacred office, possesses not a 

greater measure of it, than is commonly to be found in an English Act of 

Parliament. Dignity, simplicity, brevity, precision, intelligibility, 

possibility of being retained or so much as apprehended, every thing yields 

to Harmony. Volumes might be filled, shelves loaded, with the sacrifices 

that are made to this insatiate power. Expletives, her ministers in Grecian 

poetry are not less busy, though in different shape and bulk, in English 

legislation: in the former, they are monosyllables:[8] in the latter, they 

are whole lines.[9]

To return to the principle of sympathy and antipathy: a term preferred at 

first, on account of its impartiality, to the principle of caprice. The 

choice of an appellative, in the above respects too narrow, was owing to my 

not having, at that time, extended my views over the civil branch of law, 

any otherwise than as I had found it inseparably involved in the penal. But 

when we come to the former branch, we shall see the phantastic principle 

making at least as great a figure there, as the principle of sympathy and 

antipathy in the latter.

In the days of Lord Coke, the light of utility can scarcely be said to have 

as yet shone upon the face of Common Law. If a faint ray of it, under the 

name of the argumentum ab inconvenienti, is to be found in a list of about 

twenty topics exhibited by that great lawyer as the co-ordinate leaders of 

that all-perfect system, the admission, so circumstanced, is as sure a proof 

of neglect, as, to the statues of Brutus and Cassius, exclusion was a cause 

of notice. It stands, neither in the front, nor in the rear, nor in any post 

of honour; but huddled in towards the middle, without the smallest mark of 

preference. [Coke, Littleton, ii. a.] Nor is this Latin inconvenience by any 

means the same thing with the English one. It stands distinguished from 

mischief: and because by the vulgar it is taken for something less bad, it 

is given by the learned as something worse. The law prefers a mischief to an 

inconvenience, says an admired maxim, and the more admired, because as 

nothing is expressed by it, the more is supposed to be understood.

Not that there is any avowed, much less a constant opposition, between the 

prescriptions of utility and the operations of the common law: such 

constancy we have seen to be too much even for ascetic fervor. From time to 

time instinct would unavoidably betray them into the paths of reason: 

instinct which, however it may be cramped, can never be killed by education. 

The cobwebs spun out of the materials brought together by the competition of 

opposite analogies, can never have ceased being warped by the silent 

attraction of the rational principle: though it should have been, as the 

needle is by the magnet, without the privity of conscience.

3. It is curious enough to observe the variety of inventions men have hit

upon, and the variety of phrases they have brought forward, in order to

conceal from the world, and, if possible, from themselves, this very

general and therefore very pardonable self-sufficiency.

     1. One man says, he has a thing made on purpose to tell

     him what is right and what is wrong; and that it is called a

     moral sense: and then he goes to work at his ease, and

     says, such a thing is right, and such a thing is wrong --

     why? "because my moral sense tells me it is".

     2. Another man comes and alters the phrase: leaving out

     moral, and putting in common, in the room of it. He then

     tells you, that his common sense teaches him what is right

     and wrong, as surely as the other's moral sense did:

     meaning by common sense, a sense of some kind or other,

     which he says, is possessed by all mankind: the sense of

     those, whose sense is not the same as the author's, being

     struck out of the account as not worth taking. This

     contrivance does better than the other, for a moral sense

     being a new thing, a man may feel about him a good while

     without being able to find it out: but common sense is as

     old as the creation, and there is no man but would be

     ashamed to be thought not to have as much of it as his

     neighbours. It has another great advantage: by appearing

     to share power, it lessens envy: for when a man gets up

     upon this ground, in order to anathematize those who

     differ from him, it is not by a sic volo sic jubeo, but by a

     velitis jubeatis.

     3. Another man comes, and says, that as to a moral sense

     indeed, he cannot find that he has any such thing: that

     however he has an understanding, which will do quite as

     well. This understanding, he says, is the standard of right

     and wrong: it tells him so and so. All good and wise men

     understand as he does: if other men's understandings differ

     in any point from his, so much the worse for them: it is a

     sure sign they are either defective or corrupt.

     4. Another man says, that there is an eternal and

     immutable Rule of Right: that that rule of right dictates so

     and so: and then he begins giving you his sentiments upon

     any thing that comes uppermost . and these sentiments

     (you are to take for granted) are so many branches of the

     eternal rule of right.

     5. Another man, or perhaps the same man (it's no matter)

     says, that there are certain practices conformable, and

     others repugnant, to the Fitness of Things; and then he tells

     you, at his leisure, what practices are conformable and

     what repugnant: just as he happens to like a practice or

     dislike it.

     6. A great multitude of people are continually talking of the

     Law of Nature; and then they go on giving you their

     sentiments about what is right and what is wrong: and

     these sentiments, you are to understand, are so many

     chapters and sections of the Law of Nature.

     7. Instead of the phrase, Law of Nature, you have

     sometimes, Law of Reason, Right Reason, Natural Justice,

     Natural Equity, Good Order. Any of them will do equally

     well. This latter is most used in politics. The three last are

     much more tolerable than the others, because they do not

     very explicitly claim to be any thing more than phrases:

     they insist but feebly upon the being looked upon as so

     many positive standards of themselves, and seem content

     to be taken, upon occasion, for phrases expressive of the

     conformity of the thing in question to the proper standard,

     whatever that may be. On most occasions, however, it will

     be better to say utility: utility is clearer, as referring more

     explicitly to pain and pleasure. 

     8. We have one philosopher, who says, there is no harm in

     any thing in the world but in telling a lie: and that if, for

     example, you were to murder your own father, this would

     only be a particular way of saying, he was not your father.

     Of course, when this philosopher sees any thing that he

     does not like, he says, it is a particular way of telling a lie.

     It is saying, that the act ought to be done, or may be done,

     when, in truth, it ought not to be done.

     9. The fairest and openest of them all is that sort of man

     who speaks out, and says, I am of the number of the Elect:

     now God himself takes care to inform the Elect what is

     right: and that with so good effect, and let them strive ever

     so, they cannot help not only knowing it but practicing it. If

     therefore a man wants to know what is right and what is

     wrong, he has nothing to do but to come to me.

     10. It is upon the principle of antipathy that such and such

     acts are often reprobated on the score of their being

     unnatural: the practice of exposing children, established

     among the Greeks and Romans, was an unnatural

     practice. Unnatural, when it means any thing, means

     unfrequent: and there it means something; although nothing

     to the present purpose. But here it means no such thing:

     for the frequency of such acts is perhaps the great

     complaint. It therefore means nothing; nothing, I mean,

     which there is in the act itself. All it can serve to express is,

     the disposition of the person who is talking of it: the

     disposition he is in to be angry at the thoughts of it. Does it

     merit his anger? Very likely it may: but whether it does or

     no is a question, which, to be answered rightly, can only

     be answered upon the principle of utility.

Unnatural, is as good a word as moral sense, or common sense; and would be 

as good a foundation for a system. Such an act is unnatural; that is, 

repugnant to nature: for I do not like to practice it: and, consequently, do 

not practise it. It is therefore repugnant to what ought to be the nature of 

every body else.

The mischief common to all these ways of thinking and arguing (which, in 

truth, as we have seen, are but one and the same method, couched in 

different forms of words) is then serving as a cloke, and pretense, and 

aliment, to despotism: if not a despotism in practice, a despotism however 

in disposition: which is but too apt, when pretense and power offer, to show 

itself in practice. The consequence is, that with intentions very commonly 

of the purest kind, a man becomes a torment either to himself or his 

fellow-creatures. If he be of the melancholy cast, he sits in silent grief, 

bewailing their blindness and depravity: if of the irascible, he declaims 

with fury and virulence against all who differ from him; blowing up the 

coals of fanaticism, and branding with the charge of corruption and 

insincerity, every man who does not think, or profess to think, as he does.

If such a man happens to possess the advantages of style, his book may do a 

considerable deal of mischief before the nothingness of it is understood.

These principles, if such they can be called, it is more frequent to see

applied to morals than to politics: but their influence extends itself to

both. In politics, as well as morals, a man will be at least equally glad of

a pretense for deciding any question in the manner that best pleases him

without the trouble of inquiry. If a man is an infallible judge of what is

right and wrong in the actions of private individuals, why not in the

measures to be observed by public men in the direction of those actions

accordingly (not to mention other chimeras) I have more than once

known the pretended law of nature set up in legislative debates, in

opposition to arguments derived from the principle of utility.

"But is it never, then, from any other considerations than those of utility,

that we derive our notions of right and wrong?" I do not know: I do not

care. Whether a moral sentiment can be originally conceived from any

other source than a view of utility, is one question: whether upon

examination and reflection it can, in point of fact, be actually persisted in

and justified on any other ground, by a person reflecting within himself,

is another: whether in point of right it can properly be justified on any

other ground, by a person addressing himself to the community, is a

third. The two first are questions of speculation: it matters not,

comparatively speaking, how they are decided. The last is a question of

practice: the decision of it is of as much importance as that of any can

be. 

"I feel in myself", (say you) "a disposition to approve of such or such an 

action in a moral view: but this is not owing to any notions I have of its 

being a useful one to the community. I do not pretend to know whether it be 

an useful one or not: it may be, for aught I know, a mischievous one." "But 

is it then", (say I) "a mischievous one? examine; and if you can make 

yourself sensible that it is so, then, if duty means any thing, that is, 

moral duty, is your duty at least to abstain from it: and more than that, if 

it is what lies in your power, and can be done without too great a 

sacrifice, to endeavour to prevent it. It is not your cherishing the notion 

of it in your bosom, and giving it the name of virtue, that will excuse 

you."

"I feel in myself", (say you again) "a disposition to detest such or such an 

action in a moral view; but this is not owing to any notions I have of its 

being a mischievous one to the community. I do not pretend to know whether 

it be a mischievous one or not: it may be not a mischievous one: it may be, 

for aught I know, an useful one." -- "May it indeed", (say I) "an useful 

one? but let me tell you then, that unless duty, and right and wrong, be 

just what you please to make them, if it really be not a mischievous one, 

and any body has a mind to do it, it is no duty of yours, but, on the 

contrary, it would be very wrong in you, to take upon you to prevent him: 

detest it within yourself as much as you please; that may be a very good 

reason (unless it be also a useful one) for your not doing it yourself: but 

if you go about, by word or deed, to do any thing to hinder him, or make him 

suffer for it, it is you, and not he, that have done wrong: it is not your 

setting yourself to blame his conduct, or branding it with the name of vice, 

that will make him culpable, or you blameless. Therefore, if you can make 

yourself content that he shall be of one mind, and you of another, about 

that matter, and so continue, it is well: but if nothing will serve you, but 

that you and he must needs be of the same mind, I'll tell you what you have 

to do: it is for you to get the better of your antipathy, not for him to 

truckle to it."

4. King James the First of England had conceived a violent antipathy against 

Arians: two of whom he burnt.[10] This gratification he procured himself 

without much difficulty: the notions of the times were favourable to it. He 

wrote a furious book against Vorstius, for being what was called an 

Arminian: for Vorstius was at a distance. He also wrote a furious book, 

called `A Counterblast to Tobacco', against the use of that drug which Sir 

Walter Raleigh had then lately introduced. Had the notions of the times 

co-operated with him, he would have burnt the Anabaptist and the smoker of 

tobacco in the same fire. However he had the satisfaction of putting Raleigh 

to death afterwards, though for another crime.

Disputes concerning the comparative excellence of French and Italian music 

have occasioned very serious bickerings at Paris. One of the parties would 

not have been sorry (says Mr. D'Alembert[11]) to have brought government 

into the quarrel. Pretences were sought after and urged. Long before that, a 

dispute of like nature, and of at least equal warmth, had been kindled at 

London upon the comparative merits of two composers at London; where riots 

between the approvers and disapprovers of a new play are, at this day, not 

unfrequent. The ground of quarrel between the Big-endians and the 

Little-endians in the fable, was not more frivolous than many an one which 

has laid empires desolate. In Russia, it is said, there was a time when some 

thousands of persons lost their lives in a quarrel, in which the government 

had taken part, about the number of fingers to be used in making the sign of 

the cross. This was in days of yore: the ministers of Catherine II. are 

better instructed[12] than to take any other part in such disputes, than 

that of preventing the parties concerned from doing one another a mischief.

5. See ch. xvi. [Division], par. 42, 44. 

6. The principle of theology refers every thing to God's pleasure. But what 

is God's pleasure? God does not, he confessedly does not now, either speak 

or write to us. How then are we to know what is his pleasure? By observing 

what is our own pleasure, and pronouncing it to be his. Accordingly, what is 

called the pleasure of God, is and must necessarily be (revelation apart) 

neither more nor less than the good pleasure of the person whoever he be, 

who is pronouncing what he believes, or pretends, to be God's pleasure. How 

know you it to be God's pleasure that such or such an act should be 

abstained from? whence come you even to suppose as much? "Because the 

engaging in it would, I imagine, be prejudicial upon the whole to the 

happiness of mankind"; says the partisan of the principle of utility: 

"Because the commission of it is attended with a gross and sensual, or at 

least with a trifling and transient satisfaction"; says the partizan of the 

principle of asceticism: "Because I detest the thoughts of it; and I cannot, 

neither ought I to be called upon to tell why"; says he who proceeds upon 

the principle of antipathy. In the words of one or other of these must that 

person necessarily answer (revelation apart) who professes to take for his 

standard the will of God.

7. Additional Note by the Author, July 1822.

Add, and that the bad system, of Mahometan and other native law was to be 

put down at all events, to make way for the inapplicable and still more 

mischievous system of English Judge-made law, and, by the hand of his 

accomplice Hastings, was to be put into the pocket of Impey -- Importer of 

this instrument of subversion, £8,000 a-year contrary to law, in addition to 

the £8,000 a-year lavished upon him, with the customary profusion, by the 

hand of law. -- See the Account of the transaction in Mill's British India.

To this Governor a statue is erecting by a vote of East India Directors and 

Proprietors: on it should be inscribed -- Let it but put money into our 

pockets, no tyranny too flagitious to be worshipped by us.

To this statue of the Arch-malefactor should be added, for a companion, that 

of the long. robed accomplice: the one lodging the bribe in the hand of the 

other. The hundred millions of plundered and oppressed Hindoos and 

Mahometans pay for the one: a Westminster Hall subscription might pay for 

the other.

What they have done for Ireland with her seven millions of souls, the 

authorized deniers and perverters of justice have done for Hindostan with 

her hundred millions. In this there is nothing wonderful. The wonder is -- 

that, under such institutions, men, though in ever such small number, should 

be found, whom the view of the injustices which, by English Judge-made law, 

they are compelled to commit, and the miseries they are thus compelled to 

produce, deprive of health and rest. witness the Letter of an English 

Hindostan Judge, Sept. 1, 1819, which lies before me. I will not make so 

cruel a requital for his honesty, as to put his name in print: indeed the 

House of Commons' Documents already published leave little need of it.

8. Men(Mu epsilon nu), toi(tau omicron iota), ge(gamma epsilon), nun(nu 

upsilon nu), &c.

9. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that -- Provided 

always, and it is hereby further enacted and declared that -- &c. &c.

10. Hume's Hist. vol. 6.

11. Melanges Essai sur la Liberté de Musique. 

12. Instruc. art. 474, 475, 476.

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.[1] 

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.[2] 

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[3] 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.[4]

XI. Of these four sanctions the physical is altogether, we may observe, the 

ground-work 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.

1. Sanctio, in Latin was used to signify the act of binding, and, by a 

common grammatical transition, any thing which serves to bind a man: to wit, 

to the observance of such or such a mode of conduct. According to a Latin 

grammarian,[5] the import of the word is derived by rather a far-fetched 

process (such as those commonly are, and in a great measure indeed must be, 

by which intellectual ideas are derived from sensible ones) from the word 

sanguis, blood: because, among the Romans, with a view to inculcate into the 

people a persuasion that such or such a mode of conduct would be rendered 

obligatory upon a man by the force of what I call the religious sanction 

(that is, that he would be made to suffer by the extraordinary interposition 

of some superior being, if he failed to observe the mode of conduct in 

question) certain ceremonies were contrived by the priests: in the course of 

which ceremonies the blood of victims was made use of.

A Sanction then is a source of obligatory powers or motives that is, of 

pains and pleasures; which, according as they are connected with such or 

such modes of conduct, operate, and are indeed the only things which can 

operate, as motives. See Chap. x. [Motives].

2. Better termed popular, as more directly indicative of its constituent 

cause; as likewise of its relation to the more common phrase public opinion, 

in French opinion publique, the name there given to that tutelary power, of 

which of late so much is said, and by which so much is done. The latter 

appellation is however unhappy and inexpressive; since if opinion is 

material, it is only in virtue of the influence it exercises over action, 

through the medium of the affections and the will.

3. A suffering conceived to befall a man by the immediate act of God, as 

above, is often, for shortness' sake, called a judgment: instead of saying, 

a suffering inflicted on him in consequence of a special judgment formed, 

and resolution there upon taken, by the Deity. 

4. See ch. xiii. [Cases unmeet] par. 2. note.

5. Servius. See Ainsworth's Dict. ad verbum Sanctio. 

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]

     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.

1. These circumstances have since been denominated elements or dimensions of 

value in a pleasure or a pain. 

Not long after the publication of the first edition, the following memoriter 

verses were framed, in the view of lodging more effectually, in the memory, 

these points, on which the whole fabric of morals and legislation may be 

seen to rest.

     Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure --

     Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.

     Such pleasures seek if private be thy end:

     If it be public, wide let them extend

     Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view:

     If pains must come, let them extend to few.