Principles of Morals and

18/Jeremy Bentham
ask himself how he justifies to himself the adopting it so far? and why
he will not adopt it any farther?
10. Admitting any other principle than the principle of utility to be
a right principle, a principle that it is right for a man to pursue; admit-
ting (what is not true) that the word right can have a meaning without
reference to utility, let him say whether there is any such thing as a
motive that a man can have to pursue the dictates of it: if there is, let him
say what that motive is, and how it is to be distinguished from those
which enforce the dictates of utility: if not, then lastly let him say what
it is this other principle can be good for?

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Chapter II: Of Principles Adverse to that of Utility
I. If the principle of utility be a right principle to be governed by, and
that in all cases, it follows from what has been just observed, that what-
ever principle differs from it in any case must necessarily be a wrong
one. To prove any other principle, therefore, to be a wrong one, there
needs no more than just to show it to be what it is, a principle of which
the dictates are in some point or other different from those of the prin-
ciple of utility: to state it is to confute it.
II. A principle may be different from that of utility in two ways: 1.
By being constantly opposed to it: this is the case with a principle which
may be termed the principle of asceticism. 2. By being sometimes op-
posed to it, and sometimes not, as it may happen: this is the case with
another, which may be termed the principle of sympathy and antipathy.
III. By the principle of asceticism I mean that principle, which, like
the principle of utility, approves or disapproves of any action, accord-
ing to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the
happiness of the party whose interest is in question; but in an inverse
manner: approving of actions in as far as they tend to diminish his hap-
piness; disapproving of them in as far as they tend to augment it.
IV. It is evident that any one who reprobates any the least particle of
pleasure, as such, from whatever source derived, is pro tanto a partizan
of the principle of asceticism. It is only upon that principles and not
from the principle of utility, that the most abominable pleasure which
the vilest of malefactors ever reaped from his crime would be to be
reprobated, if it stood alone. The case is, that it never does stand alone;
but is necessarily followed by such a quantity of pain (or, what comes to
the same thing, such a chance for a certain quantity of pain) that, the

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20/Jeremy Bentham
pleasure in comparison of it, is as nothing: and this is the true and sole,
but perfectly sufficient, reason for making it a ground for punishment.
V. There are two classes of men of very different complexions, by
whom the principle of asceticism appears to have been embraced; the
one a set of moralists, the other a set of religionists. Different accord-
ingly have been the motives which appears to have recommended it to
the notice of these different parties. Hope, that is the prospect of plea-
sure, seems to have animated the former: hope, the aliment of philo-
sophic pride: the hope of honour and reputation at the hands of men.
Fear, that is the prospect of pain, the latter: fear, the offspring of super-
stitious fancy: the fear of future punishment at the hands of a splenetic
and revengeful Deity. I say in this case fear: for of the invisible future,
fear is more powerful than hope. These circumstances characterize the
two different parties among the partisans of the principle of asceticism;
the parties and their motives different, the principle the same.
VI. The religious party, however, appear to have carried it farther
than the philosophical: they have acted more consistently and less wisely.
The philosophical party have scarcely gone farther than to reprobate
pleasure: the religious party have frequently gone so far as to make it a
matter of merit and of duty to court pain. The philosophical party have
hardly gone farther than the making pain a matter of indifference. It is
no evil, they have said: they have not said, it is a good. They have not so
much as reprobated all pleasure in the lump. They have discarded only
what they have called the gross; that is, such as are organical, or of
which the origin is easily traced up to such as are organical: they have
even cherished and magnified the refined. Yet this, however, not under
the name of pleasure: to cleanse itself from the sordes of its impure
original, it was necessary it should change its name: the honourable, the
glorious, the reputable, the becoming, the honestum, the decorum it was
to be called: in short, any thing but pleasure.
VII. From these two sources have flowed the doctrines from it which
the sentiments of the bulk of mankind have all along received a tincture
of this principle; some from the philosophical, some from the religious,
some from both. Men of education more frequently from the philosophi-
cal, as more suited to the elevation of their sentiments: the vulgar more
frequently from the superstitious, as more suited to the narrowness of
their intellect, undilated by knowledge and to the abjectness of their
condition, continually open to the attacks of fear. The tinctures, how-
ever, derived from the two sources, would naturally intermingle, insomuch

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Principles of Morals and Legislation/21
that a man would not always know by which of them he was most influ-
enced: and they would often serve to corroborate and enliven one an-
other. It was this conformity that made a kind of alliance between par-
ties of a complexion otherwise so dissimilar: and disposed them to unite
upon various occasions against the common enemy, the partizan of the
principle of utility, whom they joined in branding with the odious name
of Epicurean.
VIII. The principle of asceticism, however, with whatever warmth
it may have been embraced by its partizans as a rule of Private conduct,
seems not to have been carried to any considerable length, when applied
to the business of government. In a few instances it has been carried a
little way by the philosophical party: witness the Spartan regimen.
Though then, perhaps, it maybe considered as having been a measure of
security: and an application, though a precipitate and perverse applica-
tion, of the principle of utility. Scarcely in any instances, to any consid-
erable length, by the religious: for the various monastic orders, and the
societies of the Quakers, Dumplers, Moravians, and other religionists,
have been free societies, whose regimen no man has been astricted to
without the intervention of his own consent. Whatever merit a man may
have thought there would be in making himself miserable, no such no-
tion seems ever to have occurred to any of them, that it may be a merit,
much less a duty, to make others miserable: although it should seem,
that if a certain quantity of misery were a thing so desirable, it would
not matter much whether it were brought by each man upon himself, or
by one man upon another. It is true, that from the same source from
whence, among the religionists, the attachment to the principle of as-
ceticism took its rise, flowed other doctrines and practices, from which
misery in abundance was produced in one man by the instrumentality of
another: witness the holy wars, and the persecutions for religion. But
the passion for producing misery in these cases proceeded upon some
special ground: the exercise of it was confined to persons of particular
descriptions: they were tormented, not as men, but as heretics and infi-
dels. To have inflicted the same miseries on their fellow believers and
fellow-sectaries, would have been as blameable in the eyes even of these
religionists, as in those of a partizan of the principle of utility. For a man
to give himself a certain number of stripes was indeed meritorious: but
to give the same number of stripes to another man, not consenting, would
have been a sin. We read of saints, who for the good of their souls, and
the mortification of their bodies, have voluntarily yielded themselves a

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