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Untitled Article
encountered with all the fury of a personal affray . Before noticing the light in which , as it seems to us , the several systems of ancient or modern ethics should be regarded , it may be allowed us to regret , that Mr . Bentham should have quitted his argument for the purpose of blackening the personal characters of Socrates and
Plato . Not lightly should his sanction have been given to the worthless scandal with which the ignorance or malignity of a later age assailed these great names . In a case of defamation of this kind , it becomes no one to attempt to influence the decision , who cannot produce new evidence , or elucidate the old . If Mr . Bentham had offered anything tending to uphold the credit of
that literary scavenger of antiquity , Atheneeus , on whose statements the whole case against Socrates rests , all would have been fair : but he does nothing of the kind ; he laughs at a profligacy which he could not prove , and passes on to his next enemy . Is it possible that he was affected with scepticism of history when it recorded the pure and noble , and credulity when it reported of selfishness and fraud ?
All ethical systems which differ from the Utilitarian , may perhaps be reduced to three : those which represent virtue to consist in conformity of actions with certain internal moral perceptions and feelings ; those which make its essence to be the promotion of the general happiness ; and those which define it an accordance of conduct with the will of God . The first of these ,
supported as it is by the suffrages of the great majority of philosophers from the time of Plato downwards , is the especial object of Mr . Bentham ' s antipathy . He represents it as a form of personal dogmatism , a specimen of ' ipse-dixitism ; ' and every moralist who presumes to appeal in behalf of any supposed virtue to a ' moral sense , ' or a consciousness of moral fitness , or a
perception of moral beauty , is charged with despotism , ' — with uttering the oracles of his own will for the delusion of mankind . He wishes , says Mr . Bentham , to make the world do or refrain from doing whatever practice he happens to like or dislike . Now , any one who has studied the writings of this ethical school , will see here an unworthy misrepresentation . They have proceeded
on the assumption , that the human mind is so constituted as to regard voluntary actions and dispositions with two opposite classes of emotions , —those of approbation and love , and those of disapprobation and aversion . Although these feelings did not attach themselves to the same acts in all ages and nations , anil were , therefore , obviously susceptible of external influence , these
variations appeared to take place only within certain limits , so that nowhere could the sentiments of praise and blame be found to have totally changed places . It was imagined , therefore , that from such emotions a standard might be extracted , somewhat in the same way in which a general law is discovered in the material world . By eliminating all the casual phenomena , and making
Untitled Article
616 Benlhama Deontology .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1834, page 616, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2637/page/12/
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