Principles of Morals and

Principles of Morals and Legislation/71
IX. Fifth. When an incident is inexclusively intentional, it may be
either conjunctively so, disjunctively, or indiscriminately. It may be said
to be conjunctively intentional with regard to such other incident, when
the intention is to produce both: disjunctively, when the intention is to
produce either the one or the other indifferently, but not both: indis-
criminately, when the intention is indifferently to produce either the one
or the other, or both, as it may happen.
X. Sixth. When two incidents are disjunctively intentional, they may
be so with or without preference. They may be said to be so with pref-
erence, when the intention is, that one of them in particular should hap-
pen rather than the other: without preference, when the intention is equally
fulfilled, whichever of them happens.
XI. One example will make all this clear. William II. king of En-
gland, being out a stag-hunting, received from Sir Walter Tyrrel a wound,
of which he died .
6
 Let us take this case, and diversify it with a variety of
suppositions, correspondent to the distinctions just laid down.
I. First then, Tyrrel did not so much as entertain a thought of the
king’s death; or, if he did, looked upon it as an event of which there was
no danger. In either of these cases the incident of his killing the king was
altogether unintentional.
2. He saw a stag running that way, and he saw the king riding that
way at the same time: what he aimed at was to kill the stag: he did not
wish to kill the king: at the same time he saw, that if he shot, it was as
likely he should kill the king as the stag: yet for all that he shot, and
killed the king accordingly. In this case the incident of his killing the
king was intentional, but obliquely so.
3. He killed the king on account of the hatred he bore him, and for
no other reason than the pleasure of destroying him. In this case the
incident of the king’s death was not only directly but ultimately inten-
tional.
4. He killed the king, intending fully so to do; not for any hatred he
bore him, but for the sake of plundering him when dead. In this case the
incident of the king’s death was directly intentional, but not ultimately:
it was mediately intentional.
5. He intended neither more nor less than to kill the king. He had no
other aim nor wish. In this case it was exclusively as well as directly
intentional: exclusively, to wit, with regard to every other material inci-
dent.
6. Sir Walter shot the king in the right leg, as he was plucking a

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72/Jeremy Bentham
thorn out of it with his left hand. His intention was, by shooting the
arrow into his leg through his hand, to cripple him in both those limbs at
the same time. In this case the incident of the king’s being shot in the leg
was intentional: and that conjunctively with another which did not hap-
pen; viz., his being shot in the hand.
7. The intention of Tyrrel was to shoot the king either in the hand or
in the leg, but not in both; and rather in the hand than in the leg. In this
case the intention of shooting in the hand was disjunctively concurrent,
with regard to the other incident, and that with preference.
8. His intention was to shoot the king either in the leg or the hand,
whichever might happen: but not in both. In this case the intention was
inexclusive, but disjunctively so: yet that, however, without preference.
9. His intention was to shoot the king either in the leg or the hand, or
in both, as it might happen. In this case the intention was indiscrimi-
nately concurrent, with respect to the two incidents.
XII. It is to be observed, that an act may be unintentional in any
stage or stages of it, though intentional in the preceding: and, on the
other hand, it may be intentional in any stage or stages of it, and yet
unintentional in the succeeding. But whether it be intentional or no in
any preceding stage, is immaterial, with respect to the consequences, so
it be unintentional in the last. The only point, with respect to which it is
material, is the proof. The more stages the act is unintentional in, the
more apparent it will commonly be, that it was unintentional with re-
spect to the last. If a man, intending to strike you on the cheek, strikes
you in the eye, and puts it out, it will probably be difficult for him to
prove that it was not his intention to strike you in the eye. It will prob-
ably be easier, if his intention was really not to strike you, or even not to
strike at all.
XIII. It is frequent to hear men speak of a good intention, of a bad
intention; of the goodness and badness of a man’s intention: a circum-
stance on which great stress is generally laid. It is indeed of no small
importance, when properly understood: but the import of it is to the last
degree ambiguous and obscure. Strictly speaking, nothing can be said
to be good or bad, but either in itself; which is the case only with pain or
pleasure: or on account of its effects; which the case only with things
that are the causes or preventives of pain and pleasure. But in a figura-
tive and less proper way of speech, a thing may also be styled good or
bad, in consideration of its cause. Now the effects of an intention to do
such or such an act, are the same objects which we have been speaking

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Principles of Morals and Legislation/73
of under the appellation of its consequences: and the causes of intention
are called motives. A man’s intention then on any occasion may be styled
good or bad, with reference either to the consequences of the act, or with
reference to his motives. If it be deemed good or bad in any sense, it
must be either because it is deemed to be productive of good or of bad
consequences, or because it is deemed to originate from a good or from
a bad motive. But the goodness or badness of the consequences depend
upon the circumstances. Now the circumstances are no objects of the
intention. A man intends the act: and by his intention produces the act:
but as to the circumstances, he does not intend them: he does not, inas-
much as they are circumstances of it, produce them. If by accident there
be a few which he has been instrumental in producing, it has been by
former intentions, directed to former acts, productive of those circum-
stances as the consequences: at the time in question he takes them as he
finds them. Acts, with their consequences, are objects of the will as well
as of the understanding: circumstances, as such, are objects of the un-
derstanding only. All he can do with these, as such, is to know or not to
know them: in other words, to be conscious of them, or not conscious.
To the title of Consciousness belongs what is to be said of the goodness
or badness of a man’s intention, as resulting from the consequences of
the act: and to the head of Motives, what is to be said of his intention, as
resulting from the motive.

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