Principles of western civilisation

II THE POSITION IN MODERN THOUGHT 75

if it could, the happiness of mankind would not be promoted by it.”? To Bentham, in short, the identification of social utility with the self-interest of the individual had become the fundamental principle of the science of society. To use his own words: “If every man, acting correctly for his own interest, obtained the maximum of obtainable happiness, mankind would reach the millennium of accessible bliss; and the end of morality—the general happiness—be accomplished.” ?

As we watch the conceptions of this school of thought being gradually developed in England in the writings of James Mill and others;* as we see Adam Smith’s doctrine of the individual following his own interests, and thereby unintentionally attaining the highest social good, becoming the basis of a self-contained theory of utilitarian morality; as we see the complete circle of ideas moving at last, in the system of social philosophy of John Stuart Mill, towards the full sovereignty of an accepted theory of modern society ;—the altogether remarkable nature of the spectacle we are regarding cannot fail to deeply impress the mind. No system of opinion in recent times in England has so profoundly influenced the intellectual centres of Liberalism as that of the school of thought which culminates in the writings of John Stuart Mill. No theory of society has been, in its time, so generally accepted in English thought as a presentation of the modern democratic position.

1 Deontology, supra. 2 Of. ctt., p. 12.

* See chaps. xxi.-xxv. vol. ii., in James Mill’s Avalysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, and Bentham’s Principles of Morals and Legislation, c. ii. and c. x. The origin of morality in utility, requiring no “‘ moral sense” to discern it, and operating through sympathy and the association of ideas, has been a characteristic ethical doctrine of the utilitarian school.