rmed or
engrafted upon other systems of thought. This would of course raise the
question of the truth or falsehood of the doctrines as well as of their
vitality: for the truth is at least one essential condition of permanent
vitality. The difference would be that the problem would be approached
from a different side. We should ask first what beliefs have flourished,
and afterwards ask why they flourished, and how far their vitality was
due to their partial or complete truth. To write such a history would
perhaps require an impartiality which few people possess and which I do
not venture to claim. I have my own opinions for which other people may
account by prejudice, assumption, or downright incapacity. I am quite
aware that I shall be implicitly criticising myself in criticising
others. All that I can profess is that by taking the questions in this
order, I shall hope to fix attention upon one set of considerations
which are apt, as I fancy, to be unduly neglected. The result of
reading some histories is to raise the question: how people on the other
side came to be such unmitigated fools? Why were they imposed upon by
such obvious fallacies? That may be answered by considering more fully
the conditions under which the opinions were actually adopted, and one
result may be to show that those opinions had a considerable element of
truth, and were held by men who were the very opposite of fools. At any
rate I shall do what I can to write an account of this phase of thought,
so as to bring out what were its real tenets; to what intellectual type
they were naturally congenial; what were the limitations of view which
affected the Utilitarians' conception of the problems to be solved; and
what were the passions and prepossessions due to the contemporary state
of society and to their own class position, which to some degree
unconsciously dictated their conclusions. So far as I can do this
satisfactorily, I hope that I may throw some light upon the intrinsic
value of the creed, and the place which it should occupy in a definitive
system.

NOTES:

[1] _Table-Talk_, 3 July 1830.

CHAPTER I

POLITICAL CONDITIONS

I. THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION

The English Utilitarians represent one outcome of the speculations
current in England during the later part of the eighteenth century. For
the reasons just assigned I shall begin by briefly recalling some of the
social conditions which set the problems for the coming generation