that happiness would contribute to _my_ greatest
happiness. And _how_ do you prove that you desire this result? By my
labours to obtain it, replies Bentham. This oddly omits the more obvious
question, how can you be sure that your happiness will be promoted by
the greatest happiness of all? What if the two criteria differ? I desire
the general happiness, he might have replied, because my benevolence is
an original or elementary instinct which can override my self-love; or
I desire it, he would perhaps have said, because I know as a fact that
the happiness of others will incidentally contribute to my own. The
first answer would fall in with some of his statements; but the second
is, as I think must be admitted, more in harmony with his system.
Perhaps, indeed, the most characteristic thing is Bentham's failure to
discuss explicitly the question whether human action is or is not
necessarily 'selfish.' He tells us in regard to the 'springs of action'
that all human action is always 'interested,' but explains that
the word properly includes actions in which the motive is not
'self-regarding.'[474] It merely means, in fact, that all conduct has
motives. The statement, which I have quoted about the 'self-preference'
principle may only mean a doctrine which is perfectly compatible with a
belief in 'altruism'--the doctrine, namely, that as a fact most people
are chiefly interested by their own affairs. The legislator, he tells
us, should try to increase sympathy, but the less he takes sympathy for
the 'basis of his arrangements'--that is, the less call he makes upon
purely unselfish motives--the greater will be his success.[475] This is
a shrewd and, I should say, a very sound remark, but it implies--not
that all motives are selfish in the last analysis, but--that the
legislation should not assume too exalted a level of ordinary morality.
The utterances in the very unsatisfactory _Deontology_ are of little
value, and seem to imply a moral sentiment corresponding to a petty form
of commonplace prudence.[476]

Leaving this point, however, the problem necessarily presented itself
to Bentham in a form in which selfishness is the predominating force,
and any recognition of independent benevolence rather an incumbrance
than a help. If we take the 'self-preference principle' absolutely, the
question becomes how a multitude of individuals, each separately
pursuing his own happiness, can so arrange matters that their joint
action may se