Principles of Morals and

22/Jeremy Bentham
prey to vermin: but though many persons of this class have wielded the
reins of empire, we read of none who have set themselves to work, and
made laws on purpose, with a view of stocking the body politic with the
breed of highwaymen, housebreakers, or incendiaries. If at any time
they have suffered the nation to be preyed upon by swarms of idle pen-
sioners, or useless placemen, it has rather been from negligence and
imbecility, than from any settled plan for oppressing and plundering of
the people. If at any time they have sapped the sources of national wealth,
by cramping commerce, and driving the inhabitants into emigration, it
has been with other views, and in pursuit of other ends. If they have
declaimed against the pursuit of pleasure, and the use of wealth, they
have commonly stopped at declamation: they have not, like Lycurgus,
made express ordinances for the purpose of banishing the precious met-
als. If they have established idleness by a law, it has been not because
idleness, the mother of vice and misery, is itself a virtue, but because
idleness (say they) is the road to holiness. If under the notion of fasting,
they have joined in the plan of confining their subjects to a diet, thought
by some to be of the most nourishing and prolific nature, it has been not
for the sake of making them tributaries to the nations by whom that diet
was to be supplied, but for the sake of manifesting their own power, and
exercising the obedience of the people. If they have established, or suf-
fered to be established, punishments for the breach of celibacy, they
have done no more than comply with the petitions of those deluded
rigorists, who, dupes to the ambitious and deep-laid policy of their rul-
ers, first laid themselves under that idle obligation by a vow.
IX. The principle of asceticism seems originally to have been the
reverie of certain hasty speculators, who having perceived, or fancied,
that certain pleasures, when reaped in certain circumstances, have, at
the long run, been attended with pains more than equivalent to them,
took occasion to quarrel with every thing that offered itself under the
name of pleasure. Having then got thus far, and having forgot the point
which they set out from, they pushed on, and went so much further as to
think it meritorious to fall in love with pain. Even this, we see, is at
bottom but the principle of utility misapplied.
X. The principle of utility is capable of being consistently pursued;
and it is but tautology to say, that the more consistently it is pursued, the
better it must ever be for human-kind. The principle of asceticism never
was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let
but one tenth part of the inhabitants of this earth pursue it consistently,

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Principles of Morals and Legislation/23
and in a day’s time they will have turned it into a hell.
XI. Among principles adverse to that of utility, that which at this
day seems to have most influence in matters of government, is what may
be called the principle of sympathy and antipathy. By the principle of
sympathy and antipathy, I mean that principle which approves or disap-
proves of certain actions, not on account of their tending to augment the
happiness, nor yet on account of their tending to diminish the happiness
of the party whose interest is in question, but merely because a man
finds himself disposed to approve or disapprove of them: holding up
that approbation or disapprobation as a sufficient reason for itself, and
disclaiming the necessity of looking out for any extrinsic ground. Thus
far in the general department of morals: and in the particular depart-
ment of politics, measuring out the quantum (as well as determining the
ground) of punishment, by the degree of the disapprobation.
XII. It is manifest, that this is rather a principle in name than in
reality: it is not a positive principle of itself, so much as a term em-
ployed to signify the negation of all principle. What one expects to find
in a principle is something that points out some external consideration,
as a means of warranting and guiding the internal sentiments of appro-
bation and disapprobation: this expectation is but ill fulfilled by a propo-
sition, which does neither more nor less than hold up each of those sen-
timents as a ground and standard for itself.
XIII. In looking over the catalogue of human actions (says a parti-
zan of this principle) in order to determine which of them are to be
marked with the seal of disapprobation, you need but to take counsel of
your own feelings: whatever you find in yourself a propensity to con-
demn, is wrong for that very reason. For the same reason it is also meet
for punishment: in what proportion it is adverse to utility, or whether it
be adverse to utility at all, is a matter that makes no difference. In that
same proportion also is it meet for punishment: if you hate much, pun-
ish much: if you hate little, punish little: punish as you hate. If you hate
not at all, punish not at all: the fine feelings of the soul are not to be
overborne and tyrannized by the harsh and rugged dictates of political
utility.
XIV. The various systems that have been formed concerning the
standard of right may all be reduced to the principle of sympathy and
antipathy. One account may serve to for all of them. They consist all of
them in so many contrivances for avoiding the obligation of appealing
to any external standard, and for prevailing upon the reader to accept of

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