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Untitled Article
happier inl performing the act , than in abstaining from it , this is an inaccurate account of the fact . Mr . Bentham ( if consistent ) would say , that he looked to increase his stock of good reputation
which might turn to good account some time or other ; and let those accept this explanation , who think it true to human nature . Others would say , that he acted with a view to get rid of his own uneasy emotions ; but this statement is liable to the objection , that it makes no mention of that conception of another ' s pain , which is the prominent element in his state of consciousness , and
singles out as the cause of volition , an idea which has no appreciable existence in the cluster of feelings , that of self as suffering unhappiness . Perhaps the most exact of the popular accounts of such an act are , that which speaks of it as done for its own sake ; and that which terms it disinterested ; for as the word interest in used to describe the external advantages of conduct , disinterested is an epithet fitted to denote deeds which are willed solely from their internal qualities .
The only reason which we can imagine for Mr . Bentham ' s omission of this class of intrinsic pleasures and pains of conduct , is , that they are not original , but factitious , constructed by association out of those very external sanctions which he has enumerated . From this cause it might be imagined , that to put them down , as an independent class , would be to reckon the same sanctions
twice over , first by themselves , then as parts of a highly complex state of feeling . The objection , however , thou gh not without plausibility , is unsound in itself , and inconsistent with Mr . Bentham ' s own system . Were it just , he must accuse himself of reckoning pleasures twice over . For he admits into his list the pleasures of reputation , and esteem and power ; yet these are entirely factitious , formed from the experience of more elementary
pleasures which appear in another part of the list . Indeed , it is obvious that the objection is of no worth , unless it strips away all the sanctions , except the pathological ; for the only primary pleasures and pains are those of the bodily organization . All difficulty vanishes when the true origin of human desires and affections is sought in the principle of association . Little more can be done here than to refer to the process , with the details of
which every disciple of Hartley is familiar . Life furnishes every human being at first with a stock of primary pleasures ; objects which are the procuring cause of these , though in themselves indifferent , become pleasures ; and objeotft ^^ vhich again cause these sources of enjoyment , also become pleasures . In examining
this gradation , two singularly important facts present themselves . First , that the secondary pleasures are greatly more intense than the primary , and intense in proportion to their remoteness from them . Secondly , that the secondary p leasures become altogether independent of the primary , and are loved not as means , but as ends ; and though they were to lose the power of purchasing
Untitled Article
620 Bentham * s Deontology .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1834, page 620, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2637/page/16/
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