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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

Bentham to Mr Thompson. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 10 (Memoirs Part I and Correspondence) [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. 10.

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

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Bentham to Mr Thompson.

“7th April, 1819.

“An undertaking such as yours should, if I mistake not, be preceded by all the appropriate lights which the circumstances of the time can be made to afford. Those I have in view are,—1. Mr Matheson’s Institution. 2. The great orthodox school, called the National Society School, carried on, on Dr Bell’s plan. 3. The great Schismatic school, carried on, on Lancaster’s plan, called the British and Foreign School Society. 4. The great school, or schools, at Edinburgh; of which last, if you have a copy of my Chrestomathia, you see an account in the Appendix. Of the Bell school and Lancaster school, a general idea cannot but be more or less familiar to you. Within the field of reading, writing, and common arithmetic, all the instruction they afford is comprehended. To these, Mr Matheson’s Institution adds a further acquaintance with arithmetic, book-keeping, Latin and French. Of the rapidity with which the arithmetical operations are there performed, as likewise the grammatical, so far as regards the parsing, construing, and the rules of prosody, I, as well as several very intelligent friends of mine, have been eye-witnesses,—it is only not miraculous. With regard to French, it may serve for understanding and silent reading; but for speaking, it is anything rather than French. Mr Matheson’s dialect, so Scotsmen say, is of the broadest of broad Scotch. But to the purpose in question this matters nothing. By all this, you will say, much exercise and strength may be, and doubtless is, given to the memory; but, perhaps, little to the judgment, and not a great deal more to the conception, except as to the mere signs. This I should expect to find the case. But according to my notion of the matter, confirmed by that of others, you must either lose a great many years of time, or be content with a very weak association between the signs and the ideas. But when once the signs are lodged in the memory, and the corresponding ideas by ever so weak a string hooked on to them, the association becomes gradually stronger and stronger, and the ideas clearer and more expanded.

“What you seem to require as indispensable from the beginning, I acknowledge to be necessary to perfect intellection; but it is what I should be content to find at the conclusion of the course, and I have very little expectation of finding anything like it at the commencement. Be this as it may, promptitude seems to me to be a habit of prime importance; and when acquired with relation to any one subject, it seems applicable, with more or less advantage, and with a greater or less degree of facility, to every other. What you have probably heard of the alacrity inspired by the new mode of instruction, is realized in Mr Matheson’s, I am informed, in a very extraordinary degree. The great difficulty is, I am told, to tear the boys from the work, not to set them to it.”

On inviting Mr Thompson to his house, he gives this account of his domestic habits:—

“29th Sept. 1819.

“During your stay in London, my hermitage, such as it is, is at your service, and you will be expected in it. I am a single man, turned of seventy; but as far from melancholy as a man need be. Hour of dinner, six; tea, between nine and ten; bed, a quarter before eleven. Dinner and tea in society; breakfast, my guests, whoever they are, have at their own hour, and by themselves; my breakfast, of which a newspaper, read to me to save my weak eyes, forms an indispensable part, I take by myself. Wine I drink none, being, in that particular, of the persuasion of Jonadab the son of Rechab. At dinner, soup as constantly as if I were a Frenchman, an article of my religion learnt in France: meat, one or two sorts, as it may happen; ditto sweet things, of which, with the soup, the principal part of my dinner is composed. Of the dessert, the frugality matching with that of the dinner. Coffee for any one that chooses it.”