Principles of Morals and

Principles of Morals and Legislation/41
XXXIII. Of all these several sorts of pleasures and pains, there is
scarce any one which is not liable, on more accounts than one, to come
under the consideration of the law. Is an offense committed? It is the
tendency which it has to destroy, in such or such persons, some of these
pleasures, or to produce some of these pains, that constitutes the mis-
chief of it, and the ground for punishing it. It is the prospect of some of
these pleasures, or of security from some of these pains, that constitutes
the motive or temptation, it is the attainment of them that constitutes the
profit of the offense. Is the offender to be punished? It can be only by the
production of one or more of these pains, that the punishment can be
inflicted.

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Chapter VI: Of Circumstances Influencing
Sensibility
I. Pain and pleasure are produced in men’s minds by the action of cer-
tain causes. But the quantity of pleasure and pain runs not uniformly in
proportion to the cause; in other words, to the quantity of force exerted
by such cause. The truth of this observation rests not upon any meta-
physical nicety in the import given to the terms cause, quantity, and
force: it will be equally true in whatsoever manner such force be mea-
sured.
II. The disposition which any one has to feel such or such a quantity
of pleasure or pain, upon the application of a cause of given force, is
what we term the degree or quantum of his sensibility. This may be
either general referring to the sum of the causes that act upon him dur-
ing a given period: or particular, referring to the action of any one par-
ticular cause, or sort of cause.
III. But in the same mind such and such causes of pain or pleasure
will produce more pain or pleasure than such or such other causes of
pain or pleasure: and this proportion will in different minds be different.
The disposition which any one has to have the proportion in which he is
affected by two such causes, different from that in which another man is
affected by the same two causes, may be termed the quality or bias of
his sensibility. One man, for instance, may be most affected by the plea-
sures of the taste; another by those of the ear. So also, if there be a
difference in the nature or proportion of two pains or pleasures which
they respectively experience from the same cause; a case not so frequent
as the former. From the same injury, for instance, one man may feel the
same quantity of grief and resentment together as another man: but one

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Principles of Morals and Legislation/43
of them shall feel a greater share of grief than of resentment: the other, a
greater share of resentment than of grief.
IV. Any incident which serves as a cause, either of pleasure or of
pain, may be termed an exciting cause: if of pleasure, a pleasurable
cause: if of pain, a painful, afflictive, or dolorific cause.
V. Now the quantity of pleasure, or of pain, which a man is liable to
experience upon the application of an exciting cause, since they will not
depend altogether upon that cause, will depend in some measure upon
some other circumstance or circumstances: these circumstances, what-
soever they be, maybe termed circumstances influencing sensibility.
VI. These circumstances will apply differently to different exciting
causes; insomuch that to a certain exciting cause, a certain circumstance
shall not apply at all, which shall apply with great force to another
exciting cause. But without entering for the present into these distinc-
tions, it may be of use to sum up all the circumstances which can be
found to influence the effect of any exciting cause. These, as on a former
occasion, it may be as well first to sum up together in the concisest
manner possible, and afterwards to allot a few words to the separate
explanation of each article. They seem to be as follows: 1. Health. 2.
Strength. 3. Hardiness. 4. Bodily imperfection. 5. Quantity and quality
of knowledge. 6. Strength of intellectual powers. 7. Firmness of mind.
8. Steadiness of mind. 9. Bent of inclination. 10. Moral sensibility. 11.
Moral biases. 12. Religious sensibility. 13. Religious biases. 14. Sym-
pathetic sensibility. 15. Sympathetic biases. 16. Antipathetic sensibil-
ity. 17. Antipathetic biases 18. Insanity. 19. Habitual occupations. 20.
Pecuniary circumstances. 21. Connexions in the way of sympathy. 22.
Connexions in the way of antipathy. 23. Radical frame of body. 24.
Radical frame of mind. 25. Sex. 26. Age. 27. Rank. 28. Education. 29.
Climate. 30. Lineage. 31. Government. 32. Religious profession.
VII. 1. Health is the absence of disease, and consequently of all
those kinds of pain which are among the symptoms of disease. A man
may be said to be in a state of health when he is not conscious of any
uneasy sensations, the primary seat of which can be perceived to be
anywhere in his body. In point of general sensibility, a man who is under
the pressure of any bodily indisposition, or, as the phrase is, is in an ill
state of health, is less sensible to the influence of any pleasurable cause,
and more so to that of any afflictive one, than if he were well.
VIII. 2. The circumstance of strength, though in point of causality
closely connected with that of health, is perfectly distinguishable from

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44/Jeremy Bentham
it. The same man will indeed generally be stronger in a good state of
health than in a bad one. But one man, even in a bad state of health, may
be stronger than another even in a good one. Weakness is a common
concomitant of disease: but in consequence of his radical frame of body,
a man may be weak all his life long, without experiencing any disease.
Health, as we have observed, is principally a negative circumstance:
strength a positive one. The degree of a man’s strength can be measured
with tolerable accuracy.
IX. 3. Hardiness is a circumstance which, though closely connected
with that of strength, is distinguishable from it. Hardiness is the absence
of irritability. Irritability respects either pain, resulting from the action
of mechanical causes; or disease, resulting from the action of causes
purely physiological. Irritability, in the former sense, is the disposition
to undergo a greater or less degree of pain upon the application of a
mechanical cause; such as are most of those applications by which simple
afflictive punishments are inflicted, as whipping, beating, and the like.
In the latter sense, it is the disposition to contract disease with greater or
less facility, upon the application of any instrument acting on the body
by its physiological properties; as in the case of fevers, or of colds, or
other inflammatory diseases, produced by the application of damp air:
or to experience immediate uneasiness, as in the case of relaxation or
chilliness produced by an over or under proportion of the matter of heat.
 Hardiness, even in the sense in which it is opposed to the action of
mechanical causes, is distinguishable from strength. The external indi-
cations of strength are the abundance and firmness of no the muscular
fibres: those of hardiness, in this sense, are the firmness of the muscular
fibres, and the callosity of the skin. Strength is more peculiarly the gift
of nature: hardiness, of education. Of two persons who have had, the
one the education of a gentleman, the other, that of a common sailor, the
first may be the stronger, at the same time that the other is the hardier.
X. 4. By bodily imperfection may be understood that condition which
a person is in, who either stands distinguished by any remarkable defor-
mity, or wants any of those parts or faculties, which the ordinary run of
persons of the same sex and age are furnished with: who, for instance,
has a hare-lip, is deaf, or has lost a hand. This circumstance, like that of
ill-health, tends in general to diminish more or less the effect of any
pleasurable circumstance, and to increase that of any afflictive one. The
effect of this circumstance, however, admits of great variety: inasmuch
as there are a great variety of ways in which a man may suffer in his

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