The third class of duties—­Beneficence—­must be abandoned to the jurisdiction of private ethics.  In many cases the beneficial quality of an act depends upon the disposition of the agent, or the possession by him of the extra-regarding motives—­sympathy, amity, and reputation; whereas political action can work only through the self-regarding motives.  In a word these duties must be free or voluntary.  Still, the limits of law on this head might be somewhat extended; in particular, where a man’s person is in danger, it might be made the duty of every one to save him from mischief, no less than to abstain from bringing it on him.

To resume the Ethics of Bentham.  I.—­The Standard or End of Morality is the production of Happiness, or Utility.

Bentham is thus at one in his first principle with Hume and with Paley; his peculiarity is to make it fruitful in numerous applications both to legislation and to morals.  He carries out the principle with an unflinching rigour, and a logical force peculiarly his own.

II.—­His Psychological Analysis is also studied and thorough-going.

He is the first person to provide a classification of pleasures and pains, as an indispensable preliminary alike to morals and to legislation.  The ethical applications of these are of less importance than the legislative; they have a direct and practical bearing upon the theory of Punishment.

He lays down, as the constituents of the Moral Faculty, Good-will or Benevolence, the love of Amity, the love of Reputation, and the dictates of Religion—­with a view to the Happiness of others; and Prudence—­with a view to our own happiness.  He gives no special account of the acquired sentiment of Obligation or Authority—­the characteristic of Conscience, as distinguished from other impulses having a tendency to the good of others or of self.  And yet it is the peculiarity of his system to identify morality with law; so that there is only one step to connecting conscience with our education under the different sanctions—­legal and ethical.

He would of course give a large place to the Intellect or Reason in making up the Moral Faculty, seeing that the consequences of actions have to be estimated or judged; but he would regard this as merely co-operating with our sensibilities to pleasure and pain.

The Disinterested Sentiment is not regarded by Bentham. as arising from any disposition to pure self-sacrifice.  He recognizes Pleasures of Benevolence and Pains of Benevolence; thus constituting a purely interested motive for doing good to others.  He describes certain pleasures of Imagination or Sympathy arising through Association—­the idea of plenty, the idea of the happiness of animals, the idea of health, the idea of gratitude.  Under the head of Circumstances influencing Sensibility, he adverts to Sympathetic Sensibility, as being the propensity to derive pleasure from the happiness, and pain from the unhappiness, of other sensitive beings.  It cannot but be admitted, he says, that the only interest that a man at all times, and on all occasions, is sure to find adequate motives for consulting, is his own.  He has no metaphysics of the Will.  He uses the terms free and voluntary only with reference to spontaneous beneficence, as opposed to the compulsion of the law.