voluntary causes of pain to us, become the objects of this sentiment in a higher degree, because, joined to the first immediate pain which we suffer, there is the apprehension that the same ill-will which has caused us that immediate pain, may also inflict upon us additional future pains; which apprehension of additional future pains is itself a second immediate pain of no inconsiderable severity. More yet, he who inflicts an injury upon us, which we consider to have been unprovoked, or greater than the provocation would warrant, becomes thereby an object of our moral disapprobation, is considered by us to have done wrong, and to have shown himself, at least in that particular, a bad man; and for that additional reason he becomes still more an object of our 'malevolence. 12. In this way whole tribes and nations become objects of hatred and malevolence to each other, often from very slight beginnings. The feud commences, perhaps, in some trifling injury inflicted by a single member of one tribe or nation upon a single member of the other. The clansmen of the injured party, instigated by their benevolence towards the sufferer, conceive a feeling of malevolence towards the party who inflicted the injury—which malevolence presently extends to all his tribe, on account of the protection and countenance which their benevolence prompts them to afford him. They proceed to retort the injury suffered, either upon him who inflicted it, or upon some of those connected with him. Revenge, thus associated with benevolence, comes presently to be regarded as a moral duty. 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 conspicuous 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 voluntary causes of pain to us, become the objects of this sentiment in a higher degree, because, joined to the first immediate pain which we suffer, there is the apprehension that the same ill-will which has caused us that immediate pain, may also inflict upon us additional future pains; which apprehension of additional future pains is itself a second immediate pain of no inconsiderable severity. More yet, he who inflicts an injury upon us, which we consider to have been unprovoked, or greater than the provocation would warrant, becomes thereby an object of our moral disapprobation, is considered by us to have done wrong, and to have shown himself, at least in that particular, a bad man; and for that additional reason he becomes still more an object of our 'malevolence. 12. In this way whole tribes and nations become objects of hatred and malevolence to each other, often from very slight beginnings. The feud commences, perhaps, in some trifling injury inflicted by a single member of one tribe or nation upon a single member of the other. The clansmen of the injured party, instigated by their benevolence towards the sufferer, conceive a feeling of malevolence towards the party who inflicted the injury which malevolence presently extends to all his tribe, on account of the protection and countenance which their benevolence prompts them to afford him. They proceed to retort the injury suffered, either upon him who inflicted it, or upon some of those connected with him. Revenge, thus associated with benevolence, comes presently to be regarded as a moral duty. - 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 conspicuous 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. |