Principles of Morals and

92/Jeremy Bentham
to collect. Like good-will, it is used with epithets expressive of the per-
sons who are the objects of the affection. Hence we hear of party en-
mity, party rage, and so forth. In a good sense there seems to be no
single name for it. In compound expressions it may be spoken of in such
a sense, by epithets, such as just and laudable, prefixed to words that
are used in a neutral or nearly neutral sense.
1. You rob a man: he prosecutes you, and gets you punished: out of
resentment you set upon him, and hang him with your own hands. In
this case your motive will universally be deemed detestable, and will be
called malice, cruelty, revenge, and so forth. 2. A man has stolen a little
money from you: out of resentment you prosecute him, and get him
hanged by course of law. In this case people will probably be a little
divided in their opinions about your motive: your friends will deem it a
laudable one, and call it a just or laudable resentment: your enemies will
perhaps be disposed to deem it blameable, and call it cruelty, malice,
revenge, and so forth: to obviate which, your friends will try perhaps to
change the motive, and call it public spirit. 3. A man has murdered your
father: out of resentment you prosecute him, and get him put to death in
course of law. In this case your motive will be universally deemed a
laudable one, and styled, as before, a just or laudable resentment: and
your friends, in order to bring forward the more amiable principle from
which the malevolent one, which was your immediate motive, took its
rise, will be for keeping the latter out of sight, speaking of the former
only, under some such name as filial piety. Yet in all these cases the
motive is the same: it is neither more nor less than the motive of ill-will.
XXVII. To the several sorts of pains, or at least to all such of them
as are conceived to subsist in an intense degree, and to death, which, as
far as we can perceive, is the termination of all the pleasures, as well as
all the pains we are acquainted with, corresponds the motive, which in a
neutral sense is styled, in general, self-preservation: the desire of pre-
serving one’s self from the pain or evil in question. Now in many in-
stances the desire of pleasure, and the sense of pain, run into one an-
other undistinguishably. Self-preservation, therefore, where the degree
of the pain which it corresponds to is but slight will scarcely be distin-
guishable, by any precise line, from the motives corresponding to the
several sorts of pleasures. Thus in the case of the pains of hunger and
thirst: physical want will in many cases be scarcely distinguishable from
physical desire. In some cases it is styled, still in a neutral sense, self-
defence. Between the pleasures and the pains of the moral and religious

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Principles of Morals and Legislation/93
sanctions, and consequently of the motives that correspond to them, as
likewise between the pleasures of amity, and the pains of enmity, this
want of boundaries has already been taken notice of. The case is the
same between the pleasures of wealth, and the pains of privation corre-
sponding to those pleasures. There are many cases, therefore, in which
it will be difficult to distinguish the motive of self-preservation from
pecuniary interest, from the desire of ingratiating one’s self, from the
love of reputation, and from religious hope: in which cases, those more
specific and explicit names will naturally be preferred to this general
and inexplicit one. There are also a multitude of compound names, which
either are already in use, or might be devised, to distinguish the specific
branches of the motive of self-preservation from those several motives
of a pleasurable origin: such as the fear of poverty, the fear of losing
such or such a man’s regard, the fear of shame, and the fear of God.
Moreover, to the evil of death corresponds, in a neutral sense, the love
of life; in a bad sense, cowardice: which corresponds also to the pains of
the senses, at least when considered as subsisting in an acute degree.
There seems to be no name for the love of life that has a good sense;
unless it be the vague and general name of prudence.
1. To save yourself from being hanged, pilloried, imprisoned, or
fined, you poison the only person who can give evidence against you. In
this case your motive will universally be styled abominable: but as the
term self-preservation has no bad sense, people will not care to make
this use of it: they will be apt rather to change the motive, and call it
malice. 2. A woman, having been just delivered of an illegitimate child,
in order to save herself from shame, destroys the child, or abandons it.
In this case, also, people will call the motive a bad one, and, not caring
to speak of it under a neutral name, they will be apt to change the mo-
tive, and call it by some such name as cruelty. 3. To save the expense of
a halfpenny, you suffer a man, whom you could preserve at that ex-
pense, to perish with want, before your eyes. In this case your motive
will be universally deemed an abominable one; and, to avoid calling it
by so indulgent a name as self-preservation, people will be apt to call it
avarice and niggardliness, with which indeed in this case it indistin-
guishably coincides: for the sake of finding a more reproachful appella-
tion, they will be apt likewise to change the motive, and term it cruelty.
4. To put an end to the pain of hunger, you steal a loaf of bread. In this
case your motive will scarcely, perhaps, be deemed a very bad one; and,
in order to express more indulgence for it, people will be apt to find a

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