general literature
not to be aware that in all ages of philosophy one of its schools has
been utilitarian, not only from the time of Epicurus, but long before.
But what is certain, and what would of itself be enough to entitle
Helvetius to consideration, is that from Helvetius the idea of general
utility as the foundation of morality was derived by that strong and
powerful English thinker, who made utilitarianism the great reforming
force of legislation and the foundation of jurisprudence. Bentham
himself distinctly avowed the source of his inspiration.[115]

[115] "To that book [_L'Esprit_], Mr. Bentham has often been heard
to say, he stood indebted for no small portion of the zeal and
ardour with which he advocated his happiness-producing theory. It
was from thence he took encouragement ... it was there he learned to
persevere," etc. etc.--_Deontology_, i. 296.

A fatal discredit fastened upon a book which yet had in it so much of
the root of the matter, from the unfortunate circumstance that
Helvetius tacked the principle of utility on to the very crudest farrago
to be found in the literature of psychology. What happened, then, was
that Rousseau swept into the field with a hollow version of a philosophy
of reform, so eloquently, loftily, and powerfully enforced as to carry
all before it. The democracy of sentimentalism took the place that ought
to have been filled in the literature of revolutionary preparation by
the democracy of utility. Rousseau's fiction of the Sovereignty of the
People was an arbitrary and intrinsically sterile rendering of the real
truth in Helvetius's ill-starred book.

To establish the proper dependence of laws upon one another, says
Helvetius, "it is indispensable to be able to refer them all to a single
principle, such as that of _the Utility of the Public, that is to say,
of the greatest number of men submitted to the same form of government:
a principle of which no one realises the whole extent and fertility; a
principle that contains all Morality and Legislation_."[116]

[116] _Disc._ ii. chap. xvii.

A man is just when all his actions tend to the public good. "To be
virtuous, it is necessary to unite nobleness of soul with an enlightened
understanding. Whoever combines these gifts conducts himself by _the
compass of public utility_. This utility is the principle of all human
virtues, and the foundation of all legislations. It ought to inspire the
legislator,