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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow CHAPTER VIII.: OF GOVERNMENT AND CONCORD. - The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 8 (Chrestomathia, Essays on Logic and Grammar, Tracts on Poor Laws, Tracts on Spanish Affairs)

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CHAPTER VIII.: OF GOVERNMENT AND CONCORD. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 8 (Chrestomathia, Essays on Logic and Grammar, Tracts on Poor Laws, Tracts on Spanish Affairs) [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). In 11 vols. Volume 8.

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

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OF GOVERNMENT AND CONCORD.

With the ideas that belong properly to the subject—with the purely grammatical ideas—a ludicrous mixture of moral and political ideas has happened in this case to have been associated. In these latter times, Darwin has sung the loves of the plants; but ages before Darwin, Lilly and others had sung the loves, not altogether pure from the tyranny, of the parts of speech.

Here issues to view an additional mass of useless complication,—mere evil, unalloyed with any particle of good. Anarchy would everywhere be an advantageous substitute to such government,—discord, to such concord.

Of the herbage of this jungle, a suspicion arises that the seeds were sown by the muses.

Once more, in the structure of the English language, scarcely a trace is to be found of the tissue of useless and unamusing fictions designated by those two names.