Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow CHAPTER IV.: SECOND CAUSE—INTEREST BEGOTTEN-PREJUDICE. - The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 2

Return to Title Page for The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 2

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Economics
Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law
Topic: Property

CHAPTER IV.: SECOND CAUSE—INTEREST BEGOTTEN-PREJUDICE. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 2 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


CHAPTER IV.

SECOND CAUSE—INTEREST BEGOTTEN-PREJUDICE.

If by interest in some shape or other—that is, by a motive of some sort or other—every act of the will, and thence every act of the hand, is produced, so, directly or indirectly, must every act of the intellectual faculty: though in this case the influence of the interest, of this or that motive, is neither so perceptible, nor in itself so direct as in the other.

But how (it may be asked) is it possible that the motive a man is actuated by can be secret to himself? Nothing is more easy—nothing more frequent: indeed the rare case is, not that of his not knowing, but that of his knowing it.

It is with the anatomy of the human mind as with the anatomy and physiology of the human body: the rare case is, not that of a man’s being unconversant, but that of his being conversant with it.

The physiology of the body is not without its difficulties: but in comparison of those by which the knowledge of the physiology of the mind has been obstructed, the difficulties are slight indeed.

Not unfrequently, as between two persons living together in a state of intimacy, either or each may possess a more correct and complete view of the motives by which the mind of the other, than of those by which his own mind, is governed.

Many a woman has in this way had a more correct and complete acquaintance with the internal causes by which the conduct of her husband has been determined, than he has had himself.

The cause of this is easily pointed out.—By interest, a man is continually prompted to make himself as correctly and completely acquainted as possible with the springs of action by which the minds of those are determined, on whom he is more or less dependent for the comfort of his life.

But by interest, he is at the same time diverted from any close examination into the springs by which his own conduct is determined.

From such knowledge he has not, in any ordinary shape, anything to gain,—he finds not in it any source of enjoyment.

In any such knowledge he would be more likely to find mortification than satisfaction. The purely social motives, the semi-social motives, and, in the case of the dissocial motives, such of them as have their source in an impulse given by the purely social or by the semi-social motives,* —these are the motives, the prevalence of which he finds mentioned as matter of praise in the instance of other men: it is by the supposed prevalence of these amiable motives, that he finds reputation raised, and that respect and good-will in which every man is obliged to look for so large a portion of the comfort of his life.

In these same amiable and desirable endowments he finds the minds of other men actually abounding and overflowing: abounding during their lifetime by the testimony of their friends, and after their departure by the recorded testimony enregistered in some monthly magazine, with the acclamation of their friends, and with scarce a dissenting voice from among their enemies.

But the more closely he looks into the mechanism of his own mind, the less of the mass of effects produced he finds referable to any of those amiable and delightful causes; he finds nothing, therefore, to attract him towards this study—he finds much to repel him from it.

Praise and self-satisfaction on the score of moral worth, being accordingly hopeless, it is in intellectual that he will seek for it. “All men who are actuated by regard for anything but self, are fools; those only whose regard is confined to self, are wise. I am of the number of the wise.”

Perhaps he is a man with whom a large proportion of the self-regarding motives may be mixed up with a slight tincture of the social motives operating upon the private scale. What in this case will he do? In investigating the source of a given action, he will in the first instance set it down, the whole of it, to the account of the amiable and conciliatory—in a word, the social motives. This, in the study of his own mental physiology, will always be his first step, and this will commonly be his last. Why should he look further?—why take in hand the probe?—why undeceive himself, and substitute a whole truth that would mortify him, for a half truth that flatters him?

The greater the share which the motives of the social class have in the production of the general tenour of a man’s conduct, the less irksome, it seems evident, this sort of psychological self-anatomy will be. The first view is pleasing; and the more virtuous the man, the more pleasing is that study which to every man has been pronounced the proper one.

But the less irksome any pursuit is, the greater, if the state of faculties, intellectual and active, permit, will be a man’s progress in it.

[* ]See Introduction to Morals and Legislation in Vol. I.