bentham and hume

Jeremy Bentham was utterly committed to eliminating what he called "fictions" from the law. One of these "fictions" which had been spoken of for at least a century by the most significant English political philosophers was that of a state of nature or a natural society that originally was supposed to have existed. John Locke, for example, argued that an original Social Compact was the means by which people were brought out of their isolation and fear and into organized society. But Bentham will have none of this. He rips into Blackstone for believing such a thing when there is no proof of it, and for positing a state of nature that was then followed by an orderly society. He say, "With respect to this (the "Original Contract") and other fictions, there was once a time, perhaps, when they had their use...But the season of Fiction is now over; insomuch, that what formerly might have been tolerated and countenanced under that name, would, if now attempted to be set on foot, be censured and stigmatized under the harsher appellations of incroachment or imposture.." (Ch. 1, par. 37).

But how was it that Bentham began to disbelieve in this "fiction?" He says that he was in hopes of learning more about the Original Contract because it was so strongly emphasized by other writers, but then says that "this chimera had been effectually demolished by Mr. Hume." What follows is the long, and revelatory, footnote 52. Here it is, with some omissions.

"Our Author (i.e., Blackstone), one would think, had never so much as opened that celebrated book (i.e., Hume's Treatise on Human Nature): of which the criminality in the eyes of some, and the merits in the eyes of others, have since been almost effaced by the splendour of more recent productions of the same pen. The magnanimity of our Author scorned, perhaps, or his circumspection feared, to derive instruction from an enemy: or, what is still more probable, he knew not that the subject had been so much as touched upon by that penetrating and acute metaphysician, whose works lie so much out of the beaten track of Academic reading...

2. For my own part, I well remember, no sooner had I read that part of the work which touches on this subject, than I felt as if scales had fallen from my eyes, I then, for the first time, learnt to call the cause of the people the cause of Virtue.

Perhaps a short sketch of the wanderings of a raw but well-intentioned mind, in its researches after moral truth, may, on this occasion, be not unuseful: for the history of one mind is the history of many. The writings of the honest, but prejudiced, Earl of Clarendon to whose integrity nothing was wanting, and to whose wisdom little, but the fortune of living something later; and the contagion of a monkish atmosphere; these, and other concurrent causes, had listed my infant affections on the side of despotism. The Genius of the place I dwelt in, the authority of the state, the voice of the Church in her solemn offices; all these taught me to call Charles a Martyr, and his opponents rebels. I saw innovation, where indeed innovation, but a glorious innovation, was, in their efforts to withstand him. I saw falsehood, where indeed falsehood was, in their disavowals of innovation. I saw selfishness, and an obedience to the call of passion, in the efforts of the oppressed to rescue themselves from oppression. I saw strong countenance lent in the sacred writings to monarchic government: and none to any other. I saw passive obedience deep stamped with the seal of the Christian Virtues of humility and self-denial.

Conversing with Lawyers, I found them full of the virtues of their Original Contract, as a recipe of sovereign efficacy for reconciling the accidental necessity of resistance with the general duty of submission. This drug of theirs they administered to me to calm my scruples. But my unpractised stomach revolted against their opiate. I bid them open to me that page of history in which the solemnization of this important contract was recorded. They shrunk from this challenge; nor could they, when thus pressed, do otherwise than our Author has done, confess the whole to be a fiction. This, methought, looked ill. It seemed to me the acknowledgment of a bad cause, the bringing a fiction to support it. `To prove fiction, indeed,' said I, `there is need of fiction; but it is the characteristic of truth to need no proof but truth. Have you then really any such privilege as that of coining facts? You are spending argument to no purpose. Indulge yourselves in the licence of supposing that to be true which is not, and as well may you suppose that proposition itself to be true, which you wish to prove, as that other whereby you hope to prove it.' Thus continued I unsatisfying, and unsatisfied, till I learnt to see that utility was the test and measure of all virtue; of loyalty as much as any; and that the obligation to minister to general happiness, was an obligation paramount to and inclusive of every other. Having thus got the instruction I stood in need of, I sat down to make my profit of it. I bid adieu to the original contract: and I left it to those to amuse themselves with this rattle, who could think they needed it."

From that moment on, then, Bentham became a determined opponent of monarchical/authoritarian thinking. Could we be so clear in tracing our own intellectual pilgrimage?

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