He regards 'happiness'as precisely the least equivocal of words;and 'happiness'itself as therefore affording the one safe clue to all the intricate problems of human conduct.The authors of the Federalist,for example,had said that justice was the 'end of government.''Why not happiness?'asks Bentham.'What happiness is every man knows,because what pleasure is,every man knows,and what pain is,every man knows.But what justice is --this is what on every occasion is the subject-matter of dispute.'(7)that phrase gives his view in a nutshell.Justice is the means,not the end.That is just which produces a maximum of happiness.Omit all reference to Happiness,and Justice becomes a meaningless word prescribing equality,but not telling us equality of what.Happiness,on the other hand,has a substantial and independent meaning from which the meaning of justice can be deduced.It has therefore a logical priority:and to attempt to ignore this is the way to all the labyrinths of hopeless confusion by which legislation has been made a chaos.Bentham's position is indicated by his early conflict with Blackstone,not a very powerful representative of the opposite principle.Blackstone,in fact,had tried to base his defence of that eminently empirical product,the British Constitution,upon some show of a philosophical groundwork.He had used the vague conception of a 'social contract,'frequently invoked for the same purpose at the revolution of 1688,and to eke out his arguments applied the ancient commonplaces about monarchy,aristocracy,and democracy.He thus tried to invest the constitution with the sanctity derived from this mysterious 'contract,'while appealing also to tradition or the incarnate 'wisdom of our ancestors,'as shown by their judicious mixture of the three forms.Bentham had an easy task,though he performed it with remarkable vigour,in exposing the weakness of this heterogeneous aggregate.Look closely,and this fictitious contract can impose no new obligation:for the obligation itself rests upon Utility.Why not appeal to Utility at once?I am bound to obey,not because my great-grandfather may be regarded as having made a bargain,which he did not really make,with the great-grandfather of George III;but simply because rebellion does more harm than good.The forms of government are abstractions,not names of realities,and their 'mixture'is a pure figment.King,Lords,and Commons are not really incarnations of power,wisdom,and goodness.Their combination forms a system the merits of which must in the last resort be judged by its working.'It is the principle of utility,accurately apprehended and steadily applied,that affords the only clew to guide a man through these streights.'(8)So much in fact Bentham might learn from Hume;and to defend upon any other ground the congeries of traditional arrangements which passed for the British Constitution was obviously absurd.lt was in this warfare against the shifting and ambiguous doctrines of Blackstone that Bentham first showed the superiority of his own method:for,as between the two,Bentham's position is at least the most coherent and intelligible.
Blackstone,however,represents little more than a bit of rhetoric embodying fragments of inconsistent theories.The Morals and Legislation opens by briefly and contemptuously setting aside more philosophical opponents of Utilitarianism.
The 'ascetic'principle,for example,is the formal contradiction of the principle of Utility,for it professedly declares pleasure to be evil.Could it be consistently carried out it would turn earth into hell.But in fact it is at bottom an illegitimate corollary from the very principle which it ostensibly denies.It professes to condemn pleasure in general;it really means that certain pleasures can only be bought at an excessive cost of pain.
Other theories are contrivances for avoiding the appeal 'to any external standard';and in substance,therefore,they make the opinion of the individual theorist an ultimate and sufficient reason.Adam Smith by his doctrine of 'sympathy'makes the sentiment of approval itself the ultimate standard.
My feeling echoes yours,and reciprocally;each cannot derive authority from the other.Another man (Hutcheson)invents a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong and calls it a 'moral sense.'Beattie substitutes 'common'for 'moral'sense,and his doctrine is attractive because every man supposes himself to possess common-sense.Others,like Price,appeal to the Understanding,or,like Clarke,to the 'Fitness of things,'or they invent such phrases as 'Law of Nature,'or 'Right Reason'or 'Natural Justice,'or what you please.Each really means that whatever he says is infallibly true and self-evident.Wollaston discovers that the only wrong thing is telling a lie;or that when you kill your father,it is a way of saying that he is not your father,and the same method is applicable to any conduct which he happens to dislike.The 'fairest and openest of them all'is the man who says,'I am of the number of the Elect';God tells the Elect what is right:therefore if you want to know what is right,you have only to come to me.(9)Bentham is writing here in his pithiest style.His criticism is of course of the rough and ready order;but I think that in a fashion he manages to hit the nail pretty well on the head.
His main point,at any rate,is clear.He argues briefly that the alternative systems are illusory because they refer to no 'external standard.'His opponents,not he,really make morality arbitrary.This,whatever the ultimate truth,is in fact the essential core of all the Utilitarian doctrine descended from or related to Benthamism.Benthamism aims at converting morality into a science.