eneficence, as
opposed to the compulsion of the law.

III.--As regards Happiness, or the Summum Bonum, he presents his
scientific classification of Pleasures and Pains, without, however,
indicating any plan of life, for attaining the one and avoiding the
other in the best manner. He makes no distinction among pleasures and
pains excepting what strictly concerns their value as such--intensity,
duration, certainty, and nearness. He makes happiness to mean only the
presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. The renunciation of
pleasure for any other motive than to procure a greater pleasure, or
avoid a greater pain, he, disapprovingly, terms asceticism.

IV.--It being the essence of his system to consider Ethics as a Code of
Laws directed by Utility, and he being himself a law reformer on the
greatest scale, we might expect from him suggestions for the
improvement of Ethics, as well as for Legislation and Jurisprudence.
His inclusion of the interests of the lower animals has been mentioned.
He also contends for the partly legislative and partly ethical
innovation of Freedom of Divorce.

The inducements to morality are the motives assigned as working in its
favour.

V.--The connexions of Ethics with Politics, the points of agreement and
the points of difference of the two departments, are signified with
unprecedented care and precision (Chap. XVII.)

VI.--As regards the connexions with Theology, he gives no uncertain
sound. It is on this point that he stands in marked contrast to Paley,
who also professes Utility as his ethical foundation.

He recognizes religion as furnishing one of the Sanctions of morality,
although often perverted into the enemy of utility. He considers that
the state may regard as offences any acts that tend to diminish or
misapply the influence of religion as a motive to civil obedience.

While Paley makes a conjoined reference to Scripture and to Utility in
ascertaining moral rules, Bentham insists on Utility alone as the final
appeal. He does not doubt that if we had a clear unambiguous statement
of the divine will, we should have a revelation of what is for human
happiness; but he distrusts all interpretations of scripture, unless
they coincide with a perfectly independent scientific investigation of
the consequences of actions.

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. [1765-1832.]

In the 'Dissertation on the progress of Ethical Philosophy chiefly
during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,' Mack