Principles of western civilisation

74 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

land in the middle decades of that century pervaded the entire domain of political theory, and to a considerable extent that of moral science, the characteristic features which have been here emphasised meet us at every step. The conception that the theory of the State embraces the theory of society as a whole has become absolute. That wellordered conduct in the individual is a mere matter of “felicific calculus,” and that the ends of human morality are synonymous with the enlightened selfinterest of the individual in the State, are the ideas which meet us at every turn. ‘‘ The interest of the community is,” says Bentham, “the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.” * The science of the interest of society is to him the science of the interest of the members whom he sees around him in the State. That there was any principle of antagonism between all such interests and the interests of society in process of evolution ; that all the interests visible around us could only be scientifically stated in relation to society in terms of the subordination of these interests to the ends of a process the meaning of which entirely transcended them,—there is not the slightest trace.2. On the contrary, any theory whatever of the subordination of ‘‘interest” to “duty” seemed to Bentham not only meaningless but absurd. Rather, in his opinion, “to interest duty must and will be made subservient.” * For, where both were considered in their broad sense, it was Bentham’s assertion that “the sacrifice of interest to duty is neither practicable nor so much as desirable ; that it cannot in fact have place ; and that

1 An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, p. 3. 2 Cf. Zbzd., chaps. i.-xi. 8 Deontology, vol. i. pp. 10, 11.