'is to appear to love them, and the surest way to appear to love them is
to love them in reality.' The least pleasing part of his character,
however, is the apparent levity of his attachments. He was, as we have
seen, partly alienated from Dumont, though some friendly communications
are recorded in later years, and Dumont spoke warmly of Bentham only a
few days before his death in 1829.[353] He not only cooled towards James
Mill, but, if Bowring is to be trusted, spoke of him with great
harshness.[354] Bowring was not a judicious reporter, indeed, and
capable of taking hasty phrases too seriously. What Bentham's remarks
upon these and other friends suggest is not malice or resentment, but
the flippant utterance of a man whose feelings are wanting in depth
rather than kindliness. It is noticeable that, after his early visit at
Bowood, no woman seems to have counted for anything in Bentham's life.
He was not only never in love, but it looks as if he never even talked
to any woman except his cook or housemaid.

The one conclusion that I need draw concerns a question not, I think,
hard to be solved. It would be easy to make a paradox by calling Bentham
at once the most practical and most unpractical of men. This is to point
out the one-sided nature of Bentham's development. Bentham's habits
remind us in some ways of Kant; and the thought may be suggested that he
would have been more in his element as a German professor of
philosophies. In such a position he might have devoted himself to the
delight of classifying and co-ordinating theories, and have found
sufficient enjoyment in purely intellectual activity. After a fashion
that was the actual result. How far, indeed, Bentham could have achieved
much in the sphere of pure philosophy, and what kind of philosophy he
would have turned out, must be left to conjecture. The circumstances of
his time and country, and possibly his own temperament generally, turned
his thoughts to problems of legislation and politics, that is to say, of
direct practical interest. He was therefore always dealing with concrete
facts, and a great part of his writings may be considered as raw
material for acts of parliament. Bentham remained, however, unpractical,
in the sense that he had not that knowledge which we ascribe either to
the poet or to the man of the world. He had neither the passion nor the
sympathetic imagination. The springs of active conduct which Byron knew
from experience were to Benth