width of metaphysical outlook, it has taken a very high place in its handling of the more practical problems of conduct. This is due in part, no doubt, to national character; but in the main, probably, to religious and political freedom, and the habit of discussing philosophical questions with regard to their bearing upon matters of religious and political controversy. The British moralists who wrote with political prepossessions are interesting, not merely as contributors to speculation, but as exponents of spiritual tendencies which were expressed practically in the political agitations of their times.
The history of utilitarianism (if we may use the term for the earlier history of a philosophic tendency which appeared long before the invention of the term) falls into three divisions, which may be termed theological, political and evolutional respectively. Hobbes, when he laid it down that the state of nature is a state of war, and that civil organization is the source of all moral laws, was under the influence of two great aversions, political anarchy and religious domination. It is in a clerical work written to refute Hobbes, Bishop Cumberland's De Legibus Naturae (pub. in 1672), that we find the beginnings of utilitarianism. Hobbes's conception of the state of nature antecedent to civil organization as a state of war and moral anarchy was obviously very offensive to churchmen. Their interest was to show that the gospel precept of universal benevolence, which owes nothing to civil enactment, was both agreeable to nature and conducive to happiness. Cumberland, therefore, lays it down that " The greatest possible benevolence of every rational agent towards all the rest constitutes the happiest state of each and all. Accordingly common good will be the supreme law "; and this supreme and all-inclusive law is essentially a law of nature. This important principle was developed by Cumberland with much originality and vigour. But his handling of it is clumsy and confused; and he does not make it sufficiently clear why the law of nature should be obeyed. He does, however, lay much stress upon the naturally social character of man; and this points forward to that treatment of morality as a function of the social organism which characterizes modern ethical theory. The further development of theological utilitarianism was conditioned by opposition to the Moral Sense doctrine of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. Both these writers, more particularly the latter, had postulated in controverting Hobbes the existence of a moral sense to explain the fact that we approve benevolent actions, done either by ourselves or by others, which bring no advantage to ourselves. There was a general feeling that the advocates of the moral sense claimed too much for human nature and that they assumed a degree of unselfishness and a natural inclination towards virtue which by no means corresponded with the hard facts. The fire of human enthusiasm burnt low in the 18th century, and theologians shared the general conviction that self-interest was the ruling principle of men's conduct. Moral sense seemed to them a subjective affair, dangerous to the interests of religion. For, if the ultimate ground, of obligation lay in a refined sensitiveness to differences between right and wrong, what should be said to a man who might affirm that, just as he had no ear for music, he was insensitive to ethical differences commonly recognized ? Moreover, if mere sense were sufficient to direct our conduct, what need had we for religion? Such considerations prevailed where we might least expect to find them, in the mind of the idealist Berkeley. And it was another clergyman, John Gay, who in a dissertation prefixed to Law's translation of Archbishop King's Origin of Evil (pub. in 1731) made the ablest and most concise statement of this form of doctrine. What he says comes to this: that virtue is benevolence, and that benevolence is incumbent upon each individual, because it leads to his individual happiness. Happiness arises from the rewards of virtue. The mundane rewards of virtue are very great, but need to be reinforced by the favour or disfavour of God. Further advances along the same line of thought were made by Abraham Tucker in his Light of Nature Pursued (pub. 1768-74). Gay and Tucker supplied nearly all the important ideas of Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (pub. in 1785), in which theological utilitarianism is summarized and comes to a close. Paley, though an excellent expositor and full of common sense, had the usual defect of common-sense people in philosophy - that of tame acquiescence in the prejudices of his age. His two most famous definitions are that of virtue as " the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God and for the sake of everlasting happiness," and that of obligation as being urged by a violent motive resulting from the command of another ": both of which bring home to us acutely the limitations of 18th-century philosophizing in general and of theological utilitarianism in particular. Before we proceed to the next period of utilitarian theory we ought to go back to notice Hume's Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (pub. in 1751), which though utilitarian is very far from being theological. Hume, taking for granted that benevolence is the supreme virtue, points out that the essence of benevolence is to increase the happiness of others. Thus he establishes the principle of utility. " Personal merit," he says, " consists entirely in the usefulness or agreeableness of qualities to the person himself possessed of them, or to others, who have any intercourse with him." This is plain enough; what remains doubtful is the reason why we approve of these qualities in another man which are useful or agreeable to others. Hume raises the question explicitly, but answers that here is an ultimate principle beyond which we cannot hope to penetrate. For this reason Hume is sometimes classed as a moral-sense philosopher rather than as a utilitarian. From his point of view, however, the distinction was not important. His purpose was to defend what may be called a humanist position in moral philosophy; that is, to show that morality was not an affair of mysterious innate principles, or abstract relations, or supernatural sanctions, but depended on the familiar conditions of personal and social welfare.
The rise of political utilitarianism illustrates most strikingly the way in which the value and dignity of philosophical principles depends on the purpose to which they are applied. Abstractly considered, Bentham's interpretation of human nature was not more exalted than Paley's. Like Paley, he regards men as moved entirely by pleasure and pain, and omits from the list of pleasures most of those which to wellnatured men make life really worth living: and he treats all pleasures as homogeneous in character so that they can be measured into equal and equally desirable lots. But his purpose was the exalted one of effecting reforms in the laws and constitution of his country. He took up the greatest happiness principle not as an attractive philosopheme, but as a criterion to distinguish good laws from bad. Sir John Bowring tells us that when Bentham was casting about for such a criterion " he met with Hume's Essays and found in them what he sought. This was the principle of utility, or, as he subsequently expressed it with more precision, the doctrine that the only test of goodness of moral precepts or legislative enactments is their tendency to promote the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number." These opinions are developed in his Principles of Morals and Legislation (pub. in 1789) and in the Deontology (published posthumously in 1834). Philosophically Bentham makes but little advance upon the theological utilitarians. His table of springs of actions shows the same mean-spirited omissions that we notice in his predecessors; he measures the quantity of pleasures by the coarsest and most mechanical tests; and he sets up general pleasure as the criterion of moral goodness. It makes no considerable difference that he looked for the moral sanction not to God but to the state: men, in his scheme, are to be induced to obey the rules of the common good by legally ordained penalties and rewards. He never faced the question how a man is to be induced to act morally in cases where these governmental sanctions could be evaded or did not exist in the particular state in which a man chanced to find himself. These principles of Bentham were the inspiration of that most important school of practical English thinkers, the Philosophic Radicals of the early 19th century; these were the principles on which they
