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Retaliation upon one side leads to retaliation upon the other. The quarrel spreads and widens, and at last is transmitted as an hereditary feud, the members of the two hostile tribes being taught from their earliest infancy to expect from each other nothing but injuries, and of course, to look upon each other with mutual malevolence.

13. Malevolence often rests upon purely fanciful grounds. A notion is taken up, that men belonging to a particular class, of a particular complexion, or entertaining particular opinions, are, from that very fact, men destitute of virtue, and certain to inflict injuries upon all those with whom they come in contact. From being thus represented as objects of fear, they become at once objects of hatred. It is enough to call a man a Jew, a negro, an infidel, a heretic, an atheist, to present him to the minds of many other men as a creature destitute of humanity, and bent only upon mischief; and in those minds, to which such an idea is present, malevolence springs up as a necessary consequence.*

* This mixture of benevolence and malevolence, in which malevolence appears to predominate, is the Antipathy which plays so conspicu- \ ous a part in the moral system of Bentham, and which he represents, united with Sympathy, as one of the antagonist principles to the Principle of Utility. What he calls Sympathy is a mixture of the same kind, in which Benevolence appears to predominate. Its operation will form the subject of the eighth chapter of the Second Part. In his general and sweeping condemnation of all sympathies and antipathies, Bentham has gone much too far. Without them the idea of General Utility could hardly exist. The Sympathies and Antipathies, which are hostile to the Principle of Utility, are sympathies and antipathies founded upon mistakes; such as antipathies against a Frenchman, against a papist, against a negro, against an infidel; antipathies founded on the notion, that he who is one or the other of these, must of necessity be

14. It is a common observation, that we hate those whom we have injured. It is not difficult to discover why. Those whom we have injured will naturally hate us, and will be watching, in all probability, for some opportunity of retaliation. Of this we are well aware; and being aware of it, we fear them. Fear is a present pain, caused by the apprehension of future pains; and this pain of fear, according to the law already stated, excites our malevolence against those who are the causes of it. We fear them because we have injured them; and we hate them because we fear them.

15. But if sensitive beings, who are the voluntary or involuntary causes of pain to us, cease in consequence to be objects of our benevolence, and even become to us objects of malevolence, it is at the same time true, that sensitive beings, in proportion as they are the voluntary or involuntary causes of pleasure to us, become, in the same proportion, particularly the objects of our benevolence, a circumstance which will help to explain what no theory of morals hitherto propounded does explain, why, of the sensitive beings within the scope of our perceptive and conceptive faculties, some are much more

a dangerous and injurious character. If such were the fact, these antipathies would be perfectly coincident with the principle of utility; and their want of coincidence with that principle grows out of a mistake in point of fact. Antipathies, unfortunately, are often prolonged after the facts in which they originated have ceased to exist. Mistaken sympathies arise in the same way, from falsely ascribing beneficial qualities to men or classes of men, by reason of their birth, nation, or opinions, religious, philosophical, or political, when, in point of fact, there is no warrant for any such inference.

objects of our benevolence than others; and why many things are ordinarily required as duties towards a wife, a child, a father, a friend, a neighbour, a fellow countryman, which, if done to a stranger, would argue a very uncommon degree of virtue, and would be set down as highly meritorious acts.

16. We will examine, in the first place, those pleasures of which men are the involuntary causes to each other. One of the most universal and obvious of these pleasures, is that which arises from the perception of personal beauty. Those who have written upon Beauty have confounded many things together which have no connexion. Thus we hear of the beauty of virtue, which phrase, if it mean any thing, can only mean the pleasure which the contemplation of virtue affords us, a pleasure very distinct from those which beauty occasions, and which give rise to what are called the Laws of Taste, the investigation of which will form the subject of a separate Treatise. By beauty, in its strict sense, is signified a power which certain colors, forms, and motions,* and combinations of color, form, and motion have, of producing in us certain pleasurable feelings. The contemplation of human beauty is attended by an additional pleasure, because certain outward traits are considered indicative of certain agreeable mental qualities.

17. The human voice may be either melodious or otherwise; that is, the cause to us of an additional

* Motions indeed are but a sort of changeable forms, and the pleasures and pains which originate in the contemplation of them are properly classed among the pleasures and pains of form.

set of pleasures or pains. The power of speech enables men to excite in the minds of others, through the medium of the conceptive faculty, a great variety of pleasures and pains, especially those of mental activity, of admiration, of the ludicrous, of Self-comparison, of Benevolence, of Malevolence, of Anticipation, of Disappointment, many of which pleasures and pains a man often involuntarily produces in others; but which, nevertheless, are great causes of benevolence or malevolence towards him who produces them.

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18. Persons of different sexes have an additional and most powerful means of acting upon each other through the sentiment of sexual desire; by reason of which, all other things being equal, men find far greater pleasure in the society of women than of men, and women far greater pleasure in the society of men than of women. So powerful is the operation of this cause, that men and women, who, but for the circumstance of being of an opposite.sex, would be absolutely in tolerable to each other, may become, from that cause alone, very pleasing companions; an observation which will suffice to explain many curious phenomena in social and domestic life.

The joint influence of sexual desire, of the pleasures which are produced by personal beauty, and of all or several of the other pleasures above alluded to, occasion in men and women towards persons of the opposite sex, that highest pitch of benevolence called, par excellence, Love.

Love, in this its original and proper signification, at least when it reaches any high pitch, hardly

extends, at one and the same time, to more than a single individual; and persons of the most ordinary benevolence are accustomed, under the influence of this sentiment, to submit to great pains, or to sacrifice great pleasures, for the greater pleasure of pleasing the object of their love. As in several codes of practical morals, men and women are supposed to marry from pure love and nothing else, and as they are made to promise to love each other as long as they live, which promise they are all held bound and able to fulfil; husbands and wives being thus set down as perpetual lovers; hence many things are regarded as duties between husbands and wives, which no other parties are expected to perform towards each other; and which, if done to a stranger, would prove a degree of benevolence very uncommon. The circumstance, that love embraces but a single individual at once, explains why it commands, notwithstanding the intensity of benevolence which it implies, but a limited degree of moral approbation.

19. The pleasure of Wonder, or that agreeable feeling usually called Admiration, has a power over the sentiment of benevolence, hardly, if at all, inferior to that of sexual desire; and indeed this feeling of admiration is a necessary element in that compound sentiment called Romantic Love, which plays so conspicuous a part in the literature of Modern Europe. When the sexual element is wanting, that high degree of benevolence towards particular individuals, of whatever sex, or even towards imaginary beings, which admiration produces, is called Loyalty, Devotion, and sometimes, also, Love. This

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