he says in reproach of men educated to think differently from himself.
But the passage will show the growth of opinion in a practical and
highly influential quarter.

"Nothing can be worse," says Mr Bentham, "than the
general feeling on the subject of war. The Church,
the State, the ruling few, the subject many, all
seem to have combined, in order to patronise vice
and crime in their very widest sphere of evil.
Dress a man in particular garments, call him by a
particular name, and he shall have authority, on
divers occasions, to commit every species of
offence, to pillage, to murder, to destroy human
felicity, and, for so doing, he shall be rewarded.

"Of all that is pernicious in admiration, the
admiration of heroes is the most pernicious; and
how delusion should have made us admire what
virtue should teach us to hate and loathe, is
among the saddest evidences of human weakness and
folly. The crimes of heroes seem lost in the
vastness of the field they occupy. A lively idea
of the mischief they do, of the misery they
create, seldom penetrates the mind through the
delusions with which thoughtlessness and falsehood
have surrounded their names and deeds. Is it that
the magnitude of the evil is too gigantic for
entrance? We read of twenty thousand men killed in
a battle, with no other feeling than that 'it was
a glorious victory.' Twenty thousand, or ten
thousand, what reck we of their sufferings? The
hosts who perished are evidence of the
completeness of the triumph; and the completeness
of the triumph is the measure of merit, and the
glory of the conqueror. Our schoolmasters, and the
immoral books they so often put into our hands,
have inspired us with an affection for heroes; and
the hero is more heroic in proportion to the
numbers of the slain--add a cypher, not one iota
is added to our disapprobation. Four or two
figures give us no more sentiment of pain than one
figure, while they add marvellously to the
grandeur and splendour of the victor. Let us draw
forth one individual from those thousands, or tens
of thousands,