UTILITY BETTER ASCERTAINED BY MORAL DISTINCTIONS. 579

verified by a similar process of observation. Now, we are inclined to think, in opposition to Mr. Bentham, that a legislator will proceed more safely by following the indications of those moral distinctions as to which all men are agreed, than by setting them altogether at defiance, and attending exclusively to those perceptions of utility which, after all, he must collect from the same general agreement.

It is now, we believe, universally admitted, that nothing can be generally the object of moral approbation, which does not tend, upon the whole, to the good of mankind ; and we are not even disposed to dispute with Mr. Bentham, that the true source of this moral approbation is in all cases a perception or experience of what may be called utility in the action or object which excites it. The difference between us, however, is considerable; and it is precisely this- Mr. Bentham maintains, that in all cases we ought to disregard the presumptions arising from moral approbation, and, by a resolute and scrupulous analysis, to get at the actual, naked utility upon which it is founded; and then, by the application of his new moral arithmetic, to determine its quantity, its composition, and its value; and, according to the result of this investigation, to regulate our moral approbation for the future. We, on the other hand, are inclined to hold, that those feelings, where they are uniform and decided, are by far the surest tests of the quantity and value of the utility by which they are suggested; and that if we discredit their report, and attempt to ascertain this value by any formal process of calculation or analysis, we desert a safe and natural standard, in pursuit of one for the construction of which we neither have, nor ever can have, any rules or materials. A very few observations, we trust, will set this in a clear light.

The amount, degree, or intensity of any pleasure or pain, is ascertained by feeling; and not determined by reason or reflection. These feelings however are transitory in their own nature, and, when they occur separately, and, as it were, individually, are not easily recalled with such precision as to enable us, upon recollection,

580

EXPERIENCE BETTER THAN ANALYSIS.

to adjust their relative values. But when they present themselves in combination, or in rapid succession, their relative magnitude or intensity is generally perceived by the mind without any exertion, and rather by a sort of immediate feeling, than in consequence of any intentional comparison: And when a particular combination or succession of such feelings is repeatedly or frequently suggested to the memory, the relative value of all its parts is perceived with great readiness and rapidity, and the general result is fixed in the mind, without our being conscious of any act of reflection. In this way, moral maxims and impressions arise in the minds of all men, from an instinctive and involuntary valuation of the good and the evil which they have perceived to be connected with certain actions or habits; and those impressions may safely be taken for the just result of that valuation, which we may afterwards attempt, unsuccessfully, though with great labour, to repeat. They may be compared, on this view of the matter, to those acquired perceptions of sight by which the eye is enabled to judge of distances; of the process of acquiring which we are equally unconscious, and yet by which it is certain that we are much more safely and commodiously guided, within the range of our ordinary occupations, than we ever could be by any formal scientific calculations, founded on the faintness of the colouring, and the magnitude of the angle of vision, compared with the average tangible bulk of the kind of object in question.

The comparative value of such good and evil, we have already observed, can obviously be determined by feeling alone; so that the interference of technical and elaborate reasoning, though it may well be supposed to disturb those perceptions upon the accuracy of which the determination must depend, cannot in any case be of the smallest assistance. Where the preponderance of good or evil is distinctly felt by all persons to whom a certain combination of feelings has been thus suggested, we have all the evidence for the reality of this preponderance that the nature of the subject will admit; and must try in vain to traverse

MORAL MAXIMS-SUMMARIES OF EXPERIENCE.

581

that judgment, by any subsequent exertion of a faculty that has no jurisdiction in the cause. The established rules and impressions of morality, therefore, we consider as the grand recorded result of an infinite multitude of experiments upon human feeling and fortune, under every variety of circumstances; and as affording, therefore, by far the nearest approximation to a just standard of the good and the evil that human conduct is concerned with, which the nature of our faculties will allow. In endeavouring to correct or amend this general verdict of mankind, in any particular instance, we not only substitute our own individual feelings for that large average which is implied in those moral impressions, which are universally prevalent, but obviously run the risk of omitting or mistaking some of the most important elements of the calculation. Every one at all accustomed to reflect upon the operations of his mind, must be conscious how difficult it is to retrace exactly those trains of thought which pass through the understanding almost without giving us any intimation of their existence, and how impossible it frequently is to repeat any process of thought, when we propose to make it the subject of observation. The reason of this is, that our feelings are not in their natural state when we would thus make them the objects of study or analysis; and their force and direction are far better estimated, therefore, from the traces which they leave in their spontaneous visitations, than from any forced revocation of them for the purpose of being measured or compared. When the object itself is inaccessible, it is wisest to compute its magnitude from its shadow; where the cause cannot be directly examined, its qualities are most securely inferred from its effects.

One of the most obvious consequences of disregarding the general impressions of morality, and determining every individual question upon a rigorous estimate of the utility it might appear to involve, would be, to give an additional force to the causes by which our judgments are most apt to be perverted, and entirely to abrogate the authority of those General rules by which alone men

582

USE OF GENERAL RULES.

are commonly enabled to judge of their own conduct with any tolerable impartiality. If we were to dismiss altogether from our consideration those authoritative maxims, which have been sanctioned by the general approbation of mankind, and to regulate our conduct entirely by a view of the good and the evil that promises to be the consequence of every particular action, there is reason to fear, not only that inclination might occasionally slip a false weight into the scale, but that many of the most important consequences of our actions might be overlooked. Those actions are bad, according to Mr. Bentham, that produce more evil than good: But actions are performed by individuals; and all the good may be to the individual, and all the evil to the community. There are innumerable cases in which the advantages to be gained by the commission of a crime are incalculably greater (looking only to this world) than the evils to which it may expose the criminal. This holds in almost every instance where unlawful passions may be gratified with very little risk of detection. A mere calculation of utilities would never prevent such actions; and the truth undoubtedly is, that the greater part of men are only withheld from committing them by those general impressions of morality, which it is the object of Mr. Bentham's system to supersede. Even admitting, what might well be denied, that, in all cases, the utility of the individual is inseparably connected with that of society, it will not be disputed, at least, that this connexion is of a nature not very striking or obvious, and that it may frequently be overlooked by an individual deliberating on the consequences of his projected actions. It is in aid of this oversight, of this omission, of this partiality. that we refer to the General rules of morality; rules, which have been suggested by a larger observation, and a longer experience, than any individual can dream of pretending to, and which have been accommodated, by the joint action of our sympathies with delinquents and with sufferers, to the actual condition of human fortitude and infirmity. If they be founded on utility, it is on an utility that

THE HIGHWAY OF MORALITY.

583

cannot always be discovered; and that can never be correctly estimated, in deliberating upon a particular measure, or with a view to a specific course of conduct: It is on an utility that does not discover itself till it is accumulated; and only becomes apparent after a large collection of examples have been embodied in proof of it. Such summaries of utility, such records of uniform observation, we conceive to be the General rules of Morality, by which, and by which alone, legislators or individuals can be safely directed in determining on the propriety of any course of conduct. They are observations taken in the calm, by which we must be guided in the darkness and the terror of the tempest; they are beacons and strongholds erected in the day of peace, round which we must rally, and to which we must betake ourselves, in the hour of contest and alarm.

For these reasons, and for others which our limits will not now permit us to hint at, we are of opinion, that the old established morality of mankind ought upon no account to give place to a bold and rigid investigation into the utility of any particular act, or any course of action that may be made the subject of deliberation; and that the safest and the shortest way to the good which we all desire, is the beaten highway of morality, which was formed at first by the experience of good and of evil.

But our objections do not apply merely to the foundation of Mr. Bentham's new system of morality: We think the plan and execution of the superstructure itself defective in many particulars. Even if we could be persuaded that it would be wiser in general to follow the dictates of utility than the impressions of moral duty, we should still say that the system contained in these volumes does not enable us to adopt that substitute: and that it really presents us with no means of measuring or comparing utilities. After perusing M. Dumont's eloquent observations on the incalculable benefits which his author's discoveries were to confer on the science of legislation, and on the genius and good fortune by which he had been enabled to reduce morality to the precision of a science, by fixing a precise standard for the good