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Untitled Article
mark can we know it , but b y that of happiness ? This is the Divine signature by which alone Providence na » made intelli gible his oracles of human duty . In the mind of every theist , then , who admits the benevolence of God , the religious definition is co-extensive with the utilitarian ; but the former , being derivative from the latter , cannot be permitted to supplant it .
The principle of utility ( we use the word in the absence of a better ) being established , as the criterion of right , the next step would be to apply it ; to take it round the circle of voluntary acts , and ascertain by it their character . But the pleasures and pains of conduct are so numerous , that , in order to facilitate this moral computation , it is necessary to break them up into certain classes , and each set may be regarded as a separate sanction , or retribution , on the acts which entail them . Mr . Bentham reduces them
to five heads , which he thus enumerates : ' 1 . The pathological , which include the physical and psychological , or the pleasures and pains of a corporeal character . * 2 . The social , or sympathetic , which grow immediately out of a man ' s domestic and social relations . ' 3 . The moral or popular , which are the expression of public opinion .
' 4 . The political , which comprise the legal and administrative ; (thewhole of which belong to jurisprudential rather than moral ethics . 5 . The religious sanctions , which belong to the ecclesiastical teacher . ' With the last two of these , the deontologist has little concern , They are the instruments of the legislator and the divine . ' Mr . Bentham , therefore , bases his whole system on the firs
three sanctions ; and to these we may confine our attention . To us there appears to be in the enumeration an enormous oversight ; an oversi g ht so serious as to vitiate and degrade the wnole scheme of practical morality which follows;—to remove benevolence entirely from it , though the name is retained in a new and counterfeit signification ; and to expose it to the full force of those objections which have unjustly branded the utilitarian philosophy
as the selfish system . There is one peculiarity common to all the three sanctions above-mentioned . The pleasures and pains of which they consist are all ( except a few under the first head ) subsequent to the act to which they are attached . The act is literally their cause , that is , their antecedent ; they are effects , extrinsic and sequent . By drunkenness , e . g . a man impairs his health , ( physical , ) loses influence in his family , ( domestic , ) and suffers in his reputation in the world , ( popular , )—all results after the act . It is of great moment , undoubtedly , that these external retributions should be pointed out , and appended to the volitions to whose train they belong . But to represent them as exhausting the p leasures ana pains of human conduct and disposition is a mutilation of all experience . Are there then no intrinsic p leasures
Untitled Article
61 S Btntham ' * Deontology *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1834, page 618, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2637/page/14/
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