Principles of Morals and

Principles of Morals and Legislation/99
may not meet with the same good fortune. There is no human being,
perhaps, who is at years of discretion, on whom considerations of this
sort have not some weight: and they have the more weight upon a man,
in proportion to the strength of his intellectual powers, and the firmness
of his mind. Add to this, the influence which habit itself, when once
formed, has in restraining a man from acts towards which, from the
view of the disrepute annexed to them, as well as from any other cause,
he has contracted an aversion. The influence of habit, in such cases, is a
matter of fact, which, though not readily accounted for, is acknowl-
edged and indubitable.
XXXIX. After the dictates of the love of reputation come, as it
should seem, those of the desire of amity. The former are disposed to
coincide with those of utility, inasmuch as they are disposed to coincide
with those of benevolence. Now those of the desire of amity are apt also
to coincide, in a certain sort, with those of benevolence. But the sort of
benevolence with the dictates of which the love of reputation coincides,
is the more extensive; that with which those of the desire of amity coin-
cide, the less extensive. Those of the love of amity have still, however,
the advantage of those of the self-regarding motives. The former, at one
period or other of his life, dispose a man to contribute to the happiness
of a considerable number of persons: the latter, from the beginning of
life to the end of it, confine themselves to the care of that single indi-
vidual. The dictates of the desire of amity, it is plain, will approach
nearer to a coincidence with those of the love of reputation, and thence
with those of utility, in proportion, cæteris paribas, to the number of the
persons whose amity a man has occasion to desire: and hence it is, for
example, that an English member of parliament, with all his own weak-
nesses, and all the follies of the people whose amity he has to cultivate,
is probably, in general, a better character than the secretary of a visier at
Constantinople, or of a naib in Indostan.
XL. The dictates of religion are, under the infinite diversity of reli-
gions, so extremely variable, that it is difficult to know what general
account to give of them, or in what rank to place the motive they belong
to. Upon the mention of religion, people’s first thoughts turn naturally
to the religion they themselves profess. This is a great source of miscal-
culation, and has a tendency to place this sort of motive in a higher rank
than it deserves. The dictates of religion would coincide, in all cases,
with those of utility, were the Being, who is the object of religion, uni-
versally supposed to be as benevolent as he is supposed to be wise and

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100/Jeremy Bentham
powerful; and were the notions entertained of his benevolence, at the
same time, as correct as those which are entertained of his wisdom and
his power. Unhappily, however, neither of these is the case. He is uni-
versally supposed to be all-powerful: for by the Deity, what else does
any man mean than the Being, whatever he be, by whom every thing is
done. And as to knowledge, by the same rule that he should know one
thing he should know another. These notions seem to be as correct, for
all material purposes, as they are universal. But among the votaries of
religion (of which number the multifarious fraternity of Christians is
but a small part) there seem to be but few (I will not say how few) who
are real believers in his benevolence. They call him benevolent in words,
but they do not mean that he is so in reality. They do not mean, that he
is benevolent as man is conceived to be benevolent: they do not mean
that he is benevolent in the only sense in which benevolence has a mean-
ing. For if they did, they would recognize that the dictates of religion
could be neither more nor less than the dictates of utility: not a tittle
different: not a tittle less or more. But the case is, that on a thousand
occasions they turn their backs on the principle of utility. They go astray
after the strange principles its antagonists: sometimes it is the principle
of asceticism: sometimes the principle of sympathy and antipathy. Ac-
cordingly, the idea they bear in their minds, on such occasions, is but
too often the idea of malevolence; to which idea, stripping it of its own
proper name, they bestow the specious appellation of the social motive.
The dictates of religion, in short, are no other than the dictates of that
principle which has been already mentioned under the name of the theo-
logical principle. These, as has been observed, are just as it may hap-
pen, according to the biases of the person in question, copies of the
dictates of one or other of the three original principles: sometimes, in-
deed, of the dictates of utility: but frequently of those of asceticism, or
those of sympathy and antipathy. In this respect they are only on a par
with the dictates of the love of reputation: in another they are below it.
The dictates of religion are in all places intermixed more or less with
dictates unconformable to those of utility, deduced from tests, well or ill
interpreted, of the writings held for sacred by each sect: unconformable,
by imposing practices sometimes inconvenient to a man’s self, some-
times pernicious to the rest of the community. The sufferings of un-
called martyrs, the calamities of holy wars and religious persecutions,
the mischiefs of intolerant laws, (objects which can here only be glanced
at, not detailed) are so many additional mischiefs over and above the

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