cure the happiness of all. Clearly a man, however selfish,
has an interest generally in putting down theft and murder. He is
already provided with a number of interests to which security, at least,
and therefore a regular administration of justice, is essential. His
shop could not be carried on without the police; and he may agree to pay
the expenses, even if others reap the benefit in greater proportion. A
theory of legislation, therefore, which supposes ready formed all the
instincts which make a decent commercial society possible can do without
much reference to sympathy or altruism. Bentham's man is not the
colourless unit of _a priori_ writing, nor the noble savage of Rousseau,
but the respectable citizen with a policeman round the corner. Such a
man may well hold that honesty is the best policy; he has enough
sympathy to be kind to his old mother, and help a friend in distress;
but the need of romantic and elevated conduct rarely occurs to him; and
the heroic, if he meets it, appears to him as an exception, not far
removed from the silly. He does not reflect--especially if he cares
nothing for history--how even the society in which he is a contented
unit has been built up, and how much loyalty and heroism has been needed
for the work; nor even, to do him justice, what unsuspected capacities
may lurk in his own commonplace character. The really characteristic
point is, however, that Bentham does not clearly face the problem. He is
content to take for granted as an ultimate fact that the self-interest
principle in the long run coincides with the greatest 'happiness'
principle, and leaves the problem to his successors. There we shall meet
it again.

Finally, Bentham's view of religion requires a word. The short reply,
however, would be sufficient, that he did not believe in any theology,
and was in the main indifferent to the whole question till it
encountered him in political matters. His first interest apparently was
roused by the educational questions which I have noticed, and the
proposal to teach the catechism. Bentham, remembering the early bullying
at Oxford, examines the catechism; and argues in his usual style that to
enforce it is to compel children to tell lies. But this leads him to
assail the church generally; and he regards the church simply as a part
of the huge corrupt machinery which elsewhere had created Judge and Co.
He states many facts about non-residence and bloated bishoprics which
had a very s