ws, have been among the most enthusiastic
supporters of utility; while among their contemporaries, some who were
of a more mystical turn of mind, have ended rather in aspiration than in
action, and have been found unequal to the duties of life. Looking back
on them now that they are removed from the scene, we feel that mankind
has been the better for them. The world was against them while they
lived; but this is rather a reason for admiring than for depreciating
them. Nor can any one doubt that the influence of their philosophy on
politics--especially on foreign politics, on law, on social life, has
been upon the whole beneficial. Nevertheless, they will never have
justice done to them, for they do not agree either with the better
feeling of the multitude or with the idealism of more refined thinkers.
Without Bentham, a great word in the history of philosophy would have
remained unspoken. Yet to this day it is rare to hear his name received
with any mark of respect such as would be freely granted to the
ambiguous memory of some father of the Church. The odium which attached
to him when alive has not been removed by his death. For he shocked his
contemporaries by egotism and want of taste; and this generation which
has reaped the benefit of his labours has inherited the feeling of the
last. He was before his own age, and is hardly remembered in this.

While acknowledging the benefits which the greatest happiness principle
has conferred upon mankind, the time appears to have arrived, not for
denying its claims, but for criticizing them and comparing them with
other principles which equally claim to lie at the foundation of ethics.
Any one who adds a general principle to knowledge has been a benefactor
to the world. But there is a danger that, in his first enthusiasm, he
may not recognize the proportions or limitations to which his truth is
subjected; he does not see how far he has given birth to a truism, or
how that which is a truth to him is a truism to the rest of the world;
or may degenerate in the next generation. He believes that to be the
whole which is only a part,--to be the necessary foundation which
is really only a valuable aspect of the truth. The systems of all
philosophers require the criticism of 'the morrow,' when the heat of
imagination which forged them has cooled, and they are seen in the
temperate light of day. All of them have contributed to enrich the mind
of the civilized world; none of them occupy