He defines Utility in various phrases, all coming to the same thing:—­the tendency of actions to promote the happiness, and to prevent the misery, of the party under consideration, which party is usually the community where one’s lot is cast.  Of this principle no proof can be offered; it is the final axiom, on which alone we can found all arguments of a moral kind.  He that attempts to combat it, usually assumes it, unawares.  An opponent is challenged, to say—­(1) if he discards it wholly; (2) if he will act without any principle, or if there is any other that he would judge by; (3) if that other be really and distinctly separate from utility; (4) if he is inclined to set up his own approbation or disapprobation as the rule; and if so, whether he will force that upon others, or allow each person to do the same; (5) in the first case, if his principle is not despotical; (6) in the second case, whether it is not anarchical; (7) supposing him to add the plea of reflection, let him say if the basis of his reflections excludes utility; (8) if he means to compound the matter, and take utility for part; and if so, for what part; (9) why he goes so far, with Utility, and no farther; (10) on what other principle a meaning can be attached to the words ’motive and right.

In Chapter II., Bentham discusses the PRINCIPLES ADVERSE TO UTILITY.  He conceives two opposing grounds.  The first mode of opposition is direct and constant, as exemplified in Asceticism.  A second mode may be only occasional, as in what he terms the principle of Sympathy and Antipathy (Liking and Disliking).

The principle of Asceticism means the approval of an action according to its tendency to diminish happiness, or obversely.  Any one reprobating in any shape, pleasure as such, is a partisan of this principle.  Asceticism has been adopted, on the one hand, by certain moralists, from the spur of philosophic pride; and on the other hand, by certain religionists, under the impulse of fear.  It has been much less admitted into Legislation than into Morals.  It may have originated, in the first instance, with hasty speculators, looking at the pains attending certain pleasures in the long run, and pushing the abstinence from such pleasures (justified to a certain length on prudential grounds) so far as to fall in love with pain.

The other principle, Sympathy and Antipathy, means the unreasoning approbation or disapprobation of the individual mind, where fancy, caprice, accidental liking or disliking, may mix with a regard to human happiness.  This is properly the negation of a principle.  What we expect to find in a principle is some external consideration, warranting and guiding our sentiments of approbation and disapprobation; a basis that all are agreed upon.