Jeremy Bentham

JEREMY BENTHAM
1832-2032
Being the Bentham Centenary Lecture delivered in University College, London, On June 6th 1932
WITH NOTES AND APPENDICES
BY
C. K. OGDEN, M.A.
Author of "Bentham's Theory of Fictions"
Editor of Bentham's "Theory of Legislation"

Psyche Miniatures - General Series No.46 London : 1932
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH,TRUBNER & Co. Ltd.

CONTENTS

PREFACE		7
JEREMY BENTHAM, 1832-2032		9
I.	THE PAST	11
II.	THE PRESENT	30
III.	THE FUTURE	34
	Epilogue	48
	The Bentham Bust	51
APPENDICES
1	Bentham's earliest publication	52
2	On Invention	60
3	On Education	71
4	On Legislation	73
5	On Codification	75
6	On Ireland	84
7	On America	88
8	On Offenses against Taste	94
9	On the Banking System	106
10.	On Fictions	109
11.	The Panopticon	114
12.	The Auto-Icon	118

PREFACE
In offering to a wider public this tribute to the memory of the chief Founder of University College, I take the opportunity of apologizing to those of my audience who were misled by its title. a mere act of presumption on my part -- an exercise in the Liberty of Prophesying -- was, I gather, magnified by a majority into a presumptive printer's error.
The cosmic developments of A.D. 2032 may seem sufficiently remote from the Centenary of one who was born in Houndsditch in 1748, and whose great-grandfather was a prosperous pawnbroker in the reign of Charles II. by way of justification, therefore, I have added a dozen brief Appendices, designed (in so far as they are not bait for the curious) to point forward to a new Benthamic era, in which certain neglected aspects of his work will be given the recognition they deserve.
The lecture itself is printed verbatim, as it was delivered, with the addition of a few footnotes covering passages which were omitted in the endeavour to occupy no more than forty-five minutes on a mid-summer evening -- before dining with the Effigy, as it appears opposite page 118.
This photograph I owe to Professor Elliot Smith. "It was taken", he writes, "about twenty years ago in the old Anatomical Museum of University College, by F. J. Pittock, when the figure was removed from its case for renovation. The figure consists of the mummy of Bentham was an artificial head. It is garbed in his own clothes" -- those which he last wore. The inscription on the present exhibition case reads as follows :

JEREMY BENTHAM (1748-1832)
This case contains the skeleton of Jeremy Bentham, one of the Founders of University college, dressed in this usual clothes. The wax face is a portrait by Mr. Talrych, his skull being in the small case at his feet.

I have also reproduced as a frontispiece the portrait referred to on page 14, and the bronze replica of the bust by David recently acquired by the College (p 51).
C.K.O.
June, 1932.
JEREMY BENTHAM
1832-2032 Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is indeed an appropriate honour that the author of those three monumental volumes, which for thirty years have evoked the awe and gratitude of every serious student of Bentham, should be taking the Chair to-day¹.
It was in French influences, to Fenelon, to Helvetius, and to Voltaire, one of whose last meritorious works be translated in extreme poverty, that Bentham owned his first humanistic stimulus. After providing the material for some of Mirabeau's most famous speeches, he was actually made a citizen of France, and, as such, recorded his vote for Napoleon. Through the translations of Etienne Dumont his writing became known to the world. Masses of his manuscripts were written in French ; and it was a great Frenchman, Talleyrand, who made the appropriate comment, equally true to-day " "Pille par tout le monde, il est toujours riche".²

1 . In his opening remarks from the Chair, Professour Elie Halevy referred to the early recognition of Bentham on the Continent, where he was known as le grand Bentham long before news of his existence had reached more than a few cognoscenti in England. Even in South America 40,000 copies of his works had been sold before England had absorbed as many hundreds ; and it is worth recalling that on August 31, 1832, the Federal Congress of Central America went into mourning at the suggestion of his disciple, Don Jose del Valle, its late President.
2 . It is interesting to recall that after Bentham had printed his Introduction and circulated a few copies for criticism, his friend George Wilson urged him to publish on the ground that his ideas were already being pillaged. "There is a Mr. Paley, a parson and arch-deacon of Carlisle, who has written a book called Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy . . . (more ½ page)

I . THE PAST
Before making an inventory of the goods already in our possession, or recommending any further thefts, I would remind you that in dealing with Bentham himself we are really concerned with three distinct life-times.
Had he died in 1789, in his forty-second year, on the publication of his magnum opus, the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, this Centenary might have been celebrated before I was born -- as that of the Adam Smith of Legislation.
But for more than a quarter of a century he continued his pioneer labours, first applying and consolidating, and then returning to theory ; and the work to which I shall subsequently draw your special attention was accomplished chiefly in the year of Waterloo.
Thereafter, he entered on that third and almost legendary existence, when, for a period of nearly twenty years, he guided the movement for social and political reform from his retreat in Westminster.
. . . (more) . . . 19 pages . . .
II . THE PRESENT
So much for Bentham's contribution to the world into which we were born. When we pass to a consideration of his message for the present, we are confronted by a similarity in our needs hardly less striking than the dissimilarity of our conditions.
Codification, with its corollary "Every Man His own Lawyer", is still as urgently necessary and as far off as ever. In saying this, I am more or less prepared to enter any Caveat of which the learned counsel for the defence may think they hold the Key.¹
The Population problem, Racketeering, the plight of the Inventory,² Ireland,³ Dartmore⁴-- the world's twenty-five million Unemployed, its thousand millions wasted annually on Armaments ; eight great nations contemplating Chaos, a ninth still roosting apprehensively on an ambivalent Golden bomb, and ourselves hearing egregiously together at the Edge of a very steep declivity -- these are among the fruits of our neglect of the principles by which alone, according to Bentham, security, national and international, might be attained.
Yet both as an island and as a planet we turn to nationalism, to restriction, and to economies in research and education, as our world remedy.
From 1814-1832, Europe was suffering from the effects of a typical war to end war. With Security as their watchword, our gallant and Perfides mercenaries had been discharging their muskets at the dastardly and debonair democrats of la belle France.
The terrible depression which resulted was followed by the first violent reactions of organized labour.
No part of Bentham's teaching has had a reception at the hands of his critics more pathetic than his efforts to aid the cause of Peace. The very term international was his own creation ; and here i his account of the Great Illusion :

"True enough it is that a man who has had a leg cut off, and the sump healed, may hop faster than a man who lies in bed with both legs broken can walk ; and thus you may prove that Britain is in a better case after the expenditure of a glorious war than if there had been no war, because France or some other country was put by it into a still worse condition".

Bentham's antidote was the abolition of secret diplomacy and the foundation of a League of Nations (working towards Disarmament) whose constitution he sketched much in the form in which it was eventually adopted, a hundred years too late.⁵
The internal remedy, the domestic compromise which deferred the day of reckoning for over a century, was Bentham's remedy. In his last conscious moments, he was able to understand that the Reform bill was through, and awaited only the formal Royal Assent.⁶
Prosperity was slowly restored, as we have seen, by the wholesale adoption of such democratic measures as Bentham had actually framed. International activities were encourage, social and educational monopolies were broken down, opportunities for the scientist and the inventor were multiplied. But in the subsequent era of Imperial complacency, the tradition was lost ; and if Bentham were with us to-day, his indictment would surely be as fierce and as justifiable as that which he directed against the Eighteenth Century obstructionists.
Our chances have been greater and our failure the more reprehensible. for to-day a tiny Balkan spark can light ten millions to their doom ; a mere Scandinavian match-maker can, as a hobby, destroy monetary values greater than the entire cost of the Napoleonic wars. Whether as potential legislator or vaticinatory [prophet] sociologist, Bentham could have dismissed the account given of him, for example, in Great Jurists of the World, as nonsense ;and would regard his own dismissal by The Cambridge Modern History as "nonsense upon stilts" -- as phrase which he himself applied so effectively to the French Declaration of Rights.

1. See Appendix 5. 2. Appendix 2. 3. See Appendix 6. 4. See Appendix 11.
5. C. J. Colombos, Introduction to Jeremy Bentham's Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace, p. 3 (Grotius Society Publications, 1927).
6. "From 1820-1830 I believe the most wonderful period in our history, if we look merely at the importance of people's opinions. The writings of Bentham produced a silent revolution in the mode of treating all political and moral subjects. The habits of thought were entirely new, and the whole body of political writers, without (for the most part) knowing spirit, and submitted all acts to the new test." Roebuck, op. cit., p. 217.

III . THE FUTURE
So far we have relied on the vice of authority. Experts have gone out of their way to insist, in their several fields, on Bentham;s contribution. I have cited no Benthamite -- no Radical or disciple -- only solid independent adjudicators at the Bar of History.
To Codification, another word which -- like 'maximize' and 'minimize' -- we also owe to Bentham, I have already referred. but this is not the place to do more than remind you of the bulky Skeleton which Bentham has jammed, so ineluctably [clearly], into every legal and constitutional Cupboard.
The achievement on which I would rather dwell is one which his disciples, his critics, and his biographers have so consistently overlooked,¹ that a certain diffidence might be becoming, in thus introducing it -- were it not that Bentham himself is equally confident of its importance. Indeed, I would suggest that in the year 2032 it will be his chief claim to the attention of mankind.
After all, there have been other able jurists and there must have been something that gave Bentham his uncanny grasp of the essentials of every subject with which he had to deal. What made his clarity so disconcerting, his prophecy so unerring, his tolerance so universal ?
It is hard to state the case without either seeming too extravagant or verging on the academic.
For thousands of years man has been at the mercy of Word-magic : his philosophies have been but a reflection of his verbal habits ; his controversies have been generated by verbal illusion. Greek though first became conscious of the illusion, but remained to the end a projection of the grammar of the Indo-European languages. Subsequent thinkers pierced the mist of words at certain strategic points ; but Bentham was the first from whom the clouds were rolled back, and for whom language became an instrument which could be handled with safety, and improved at will.
Was he, then, just another philosopher ? Emphatically, no.
Was he not just another philologist ? Unfortunately, linguists will be the last to welcome him into their fold.
He was creating a new Science, which I would call Orthology ; and of this science his Theory of Fictions is the cornerstone.
The chief questions he asked himself were these :

nature

translate

improved ?

International language ?

His approach to these problems differed from that of his predecessors, such s Hobson, Lock, and Horne Tooke, in that it was what we would today describe as technological. In other words, he insisted that language, in all its forms, whether in law, in logic, or in mathematics, must be interpreted or analysed in relation to its social and (as we would now say) its operational context, as a human instrument, conditioned by an all-too-human psychology, and modified by the needs of each particular environment.
The importance of the operational factor led Bentham to his theory of Archetypes -- the Basic Pointing Symbols. Some words point at things, as the hands of a clock point at the hours. Others, such as right, or motion, or of, or liberty, are like single parts of a particular clock. They may help to do the pointing ; but take any such part in isolation, and it is just an intriguing piece of metal, about which any number of conflicting theories may be held. Put it back in its place, where it helps to perform some operation, and you can see what sort of a job it does. Above all, you can see what substitutes are possible, either for any particular part, or for any portion which functions as a unit.
In language, some words are not even parts of such portions. They are accelerators and lubricants -- for speeding up the work of communication. A word like we stands for you and I. A word like good, at any rate on Dr. Westmarck's theory, may perhaps sad for what we gurgle at, what we say 'goo-goo' at ; and when we want everyone else to ride the same hobby we make it a capital G. And so on.
These lubricating words are of many kinds. Some of them are more of the nature of accessories and gadgets. If we assume that they are always stand directly for other words, we shall be wrong. And we shall be still more wrong if we assume that they stand for things of any kind. Yet language forces us to talk as though 'matter' and 'motion,' 'rights' and 'obligations,' were entities.
Philosophy, in short, is 99 per cent, the unconscious misunderstanding, or the unjustifiable exploitation of the elliptical, the metaphorical, and the fictional. Hence the Platonic theory of Ideas, the mediaeval doctrine of subsistent Universals, the Nominalist-realist controversy, much of the Hegelian Dialectic, and ever the most characteristic utterances of the greatest contemporary Physicists.
Bentham's Theory of Fictions is the first systematic attempt to clear the whole logical, legal, and political jungle of its supposititious population.
Bentham was lead to his Theory of Linguistic Fictions partly by reflections on the Fear of Ghosts which dominated his childhood and partly by the dislike of legal Fictions which was generated by Blackstone's lectures at Oxford. From doubting the reality behind the ghostly vocabulary of spectres, imps, and bogeys, and the morality behind the legal vocabulary of John Doe and Richard Roe -- he passed to an examination of the foundations of language itself.
In 1814, when he had been repaid £23,000 by the Government as compensation for pigeon-holing his Prison Reform schemes,¹ he was in a position for the first time in his life to sit down in comfort to what he clearly regarded as the most difficult task by which mankind is confronted. He took a four years lease of Forde Abbey, then in Devonshire (and spelt without an "e"), though now in Dorset (and spelt with an 'e')., and began to struggle with the problems of symbolic analysis.
He succeeded in avoiding both the scepticism and the mysticism which have sterilized so many similar attempts. He clearly distinguished the emotive and referential functions of symbols, interpreting the fictional language of psychology, so that, while faculties were properly relegated to the position of mere classificatory conveniences, general ideas were accepted almost on an equal footing and sensations. He anticipated, and went far beyond, Vaihinger's justly esteemed Philosophie des Als Ob; and, a fortiori, the relevant analyses of Bergson. And his method of Archetypation does all that the modern theory of Incomplete Symbols has attempted, without resort to mathematical or logical jargon at any point.
In considering the value of this side of Bentham's work, I would remind you particularly that the experts to whom it would naturally be referred are at present the precise counterparts of the lawyers by whom Bentham's triumphant criticism was at first rejected and is still resented. If Bentham is right, Logic, and especially the latest developments of the logico-analytical school, is still the chief sanctuary of Word-magic -- whether in Cambridge, in Paris, in Harvard, or in Gottingen.
The present attitude of historians to such work is indicated by the fact that Emile Brehier's Histoire de la Philosophie, in the section published last week, devoted two pages (of his 2000) to Bentham, twenty to Schelling, and thirty to Maine de Biran. I hope yet to see a History of Thought in which five pages will be devoted to each of the two later gentlemen, and at least fifty to Bentham.
The material on which an independent judgment may be formed will be published in due course.¹ The mathematical and operational setting is provided by Professour Buchanan's Symbolic Distance, which appeared a few years ago ; and further supprt for the general position adopted by Bentham will be found in Mr Max Black's forthcoming treatise on The Nature of Mathematics. It may be necessary to suspend judgment for many years ; but my prophecy is that Bentham's reputation as the initiator of a new technique will increase with every development of the Linguistic Conscience throughout the next century.
On the theoretical side, then Bentham's analysis provides us with the means of discovering what we are talking about, especially in those field where the noose of words is now threatening to render science inarticulate. On the practical side, his message for the future is of equal significance.
And here, by way of preface, I would remind you that he regarded the verb as a sort of linguistic eel -- slippery rhetorical luxury, requiring systematic stabilization by Auxiliaries. This cluster of suggestions, in particular, is one which I myself have recently been endeavouring to develop further.
Which brings me to this bit of paper [The Basic Word-list, printed at the front of Basic English (1930) and Debabelization (1931).] on which Bentham's ideas for an international language have at last been worked out.
Some ten years back, while changing a number of Americanisms into English for the International Library of Psychology, I was unable to get away from the feeling that this foolish process was like putting wax lights back into a Club because certain old men had not got used to the electric system. But it was worse than a waste of time. From the point of view of an International Language it was clearly a step in the wrong direction.

busy.

wise

In the same way that 'get ready' has been taken, or is taking, the place of 'prepare', 'put wise' will one day come as naturally to our ears as 'inform', 'orientate', or even 'tip the wink'.
By putting together the names of the ten chief operations of Physics with the names of the twenty directions of Geometry, it is possible to do without the 4000 verbs which give most trouble to the learner of English. What if, on the lines of Bentham's suggestion, it was possible to get all the words necessary for the purposes of everyday life, general talk, news, trade, and science on one bit of business notepaper ? It took ten years to get the answer ; but the work is now almost complete, and goes by the name of "Basic English'.
Everyone here present has at least ten thousand words ready for all purposes : indeed there are more than seven thousand root words so common that they are freely used even by the general public. Statements in the papers, saying that we may get on happily with about 500, are based on the chance ideas of some office-boy, trained, possibly, in the school of Max Muller.
Basic English is a system in which eight hundred and fifty words, with five simple rules, do all the work of twenty thousand. To the eye and ear it does not seem in any way different from normal English, which is now the natural language, or the language of the governments, of 500,000,000 persons : and the complete list might be learned in less than twenty-four hours from one small folding gramophone record.
It has the support of fifty of the most important men of science and letters now living. Amongst them are Mr Lloyd James, and Professors Huxley, Hogben, Elliot Smith and others, of this University ; Mr Bernard Shaw and Mr H. G. Wells. It is being increasingly used in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Germany, and Scandinavia ; in Japan, and in other parts of Asia and Africa.
For help at every stage in the work, Bentham's Theory of Fictions was of the greatest value ; and his support for the idea that the 'verb'-system might be broken up for international purposes, was responsible for the decision at least to make the attempt. So Bentham is the true father of Basic English -- and that, in my opinion, will be his third great chance of increasing our debt to him in the future.
You may or may not have been conscious that from the point when I took this bit of paper in my hand, I have been talking in Basic English all the time, so as to give you an example of what Bentham had in mind. That is to say, I have been limiting myself to these 850 words in place of the thirty or forty thousand of which I will again make use as I now put down the Basic list.

In conclusion, I offer three concrete suggestions for those who desire this Centenary to have some practical outcome.

1 . The first concerns the Works themselves.
No more unattractive format could have been devised than those seven thousand pages of double-column small type, full of misprints, inadequately indexed, with the biographical material all jumbled together, the anti-ecclesiastical manifestoes deliberately omitted, and the manuscripts themselves covered haphazard or not at all.
Bentham's executor, Sir John Bowring, greatly to the indignation of Bentham's botanically-minded heir, wasted some £6000 on the eleven volumes to which students are still condemned to turn.
For the last seventy years, only three of the twelve most essential treatises have been in print. The Work themselves are almost unobtainable. So that the whole of Bentham's writing require re-editing and re-publishing in at least fifty volumes. £10,000 would cover the undertaking.

2 . Secondly, there are those 75,000 manuscript pages still maturing in your cellars.
By the courtesy of the Library Committee, I and others ave had access to them, but until Professor Halevy decided to sacrifice himself, no one had actually read more than a few pages ; and they have never been studied at all from the point of view of symbolic theory.
They are officially catalogued many years ago, but the collation was not sufficiently circumspect to prevent the re-interment of two parts of one complete un-published work in two quite different sarcophagi.
They may be safe from fire and theft ; but they enjoy no immunity from Acts of God, or of the King's Enemies, or from the still more maleficent ravages of Time. The last risk is the most serious, because certain of the inks employed by Bentham and his amanuenses are fading rapidly, and many of the pencilled notes are already un-decipherable.
They will, however, be fortunate to survive the next War ; in which, if science continues to be applied chiefly for destructive purposes, one single bomb should be more than sufficient to blow the entire British Museum a kilometre into the air.
The cost of duplicating the 5000 most promising sheets -- by photostat or other methods -- need not exceed £100. The other 70,000 could then be vicariously exploited, during the next decades, by such documentary adventures as American enthusiasm will undoubtedly supply -- if only as a result of the present Celebrations.

3 . My final suggestion concerns the one portrait of Bentham which those who knew him considered adequate.
It was presented to the first Lord Lansdowne by Bentham's father. it has now vanished and left no trace. The present Marquess has supplied me with all the information in this possession ; but at present the SOS still runs "

Lost by the Nineteenth Century, in appreciation of his services, one full-length portrait of its greatest thinker, in his prime. anyone find same will be suitably rewarded -- by posterity.
EPILOGUE
I am now within two minutes of my allotted time -- and perhaps the moral of this Centenary may best be given by adapting a short Parable which I wrote originally so long ago as 1912, for another purpose. It tells the story of Man's adventures with Word Magic -- starting, like all good modern histories, with Amoeba :
"REALIZE thyself, Amoeba dear", said Will : so Amoeba realized herself, and there was no Small Change but many Checks on the Bank wherein the wild Time grew and grew and grew.
. . . (more) . . . 3 pages . . .

APPENDIX
. . . (more) . . .70 pages . . .

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