n the form of benevolence.[215] He was at any
rate in the position of a man with the agreeable conviction that he has
only to prove the wisdom of a given course in order to secure its
adoption. Like many mechanical inventors, he took for granted that a
process which was shown to be useful would therefore be at once adopted,
and failed to anticipate the determined opposition of the great mass of
'vested interests' already in possession.

At this period he made the discovery, or what he held to be the
discovery, which governed his whole future career. He laid down the
principle which was to give the clue to all his investigations; and, as
he thought, required only to be announced to secure universal
acceptance. When Bentham revolted against the intellectual food provided
at school and college, he naturally took up the philosophy which at that
period represented the really living stream of thought. To be a man of
enlightenment in those days was to belong to the school of Locke. Locke
represented reason, free thought, and the abandonment of prejudice.
Besides Locke, he mentions Hume, Montesquieu, Helvetius, Beccaria, and
Barrington. Helvetius especially did much to suggest to him his leading
principle, and upon country trips which he took with his father and
step-mother, he used to lag behind studying Helvetius' _De
l'Esprit_.[216] Locke, he says in an early note (1773-1774), should give
the principles, Helvetius the matter, of a complete digest of the law.
He mentions with especial interest the third volume of Hume's _Treatise
on Human Nature_ for its ethical views: 'he felt as if scales fell from
his eyes' when he read it.[217] Daines Barrington's _Observations on the
Statutes_ (1766) interested him by miscellaneous suggestions. The book,
he says,[218] was a 'great treasure.' 'It is everything, _a propos_ of
everything; I wrote volumes upon this volume.' Beccaria's treatise upon
crimes and punishments had appeared in 1764, and had excited the
applause of Europe. The world was clearly ready for a fundamental
reconstruction of legislative theories. Under the influence of such
studies Bentham formulated his famous principle--a principle which to
some seemed a barren truism, to others a mere epigram, and to some a
dangerous falsehood. Bentham accepted it not only as true, but as
expressing a truth of extraordinary fecundity, capable of guiding him
through the whole labyrinth of political and legislative speculation.
His 'fund