easures and pains, not only
happiness but justice and duty and obligation and virtue--all of which
have been so elaborately held up to view as independent of them--are so
many empty sounds.'[386] The ultimate facts, then, are pains and
pleasures. They are the substantives of which these other words are
properly the adjectives. A pain or a pleasure may exist by itself, that
is without being virtuous or vicious: but virtue and vice can only exist
in so far as pain and pleasure exists.

This analysis of 'obligation' is a characteristic doctrine of the
Utilitarian school. We are under an 'obligation' so far as we are
affected by a 'sanction.' It appeared to Bentham so obvious as to need
no demonstration, only an exposition of the emptiness of any verbal
contradiction. Such metaphysical basis as he needed is simply the
attempt to express the corresponding conception of reality which, in his
opinion, only requires to be expressed to carry conviction.

NOTES:

[355] See note under Bentham's life, _ante_, p. 178.

[356] Preface to _Morals and Legislation_.

[357] _Works_, i. ('Morals and Legislation'), ii. _n._

[358] _Essay_, bk. ii. ch. xxi. Sec. 39-Sec. 44. The will, says Locke, is
determined by the 'uneasiness of desire.' What moves desire? Happiness,
and that alone. Happiness is pleasure, and misery pain. What produces
pleasure we call good; and what produces pain we call evil. Locke,
however, was not a consistent Utilitarian.

[359] Epistle iv., opening lines.

[360] _Works_, vii. 82.

[361] _Works_ ('Constitutional Code'), ix. 123.

[362] _Works_ ('Fragment'), i. 287.

[363] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 8-10. Mill quotes this
passage in his essay on Bentham in the first volume of his
_Dissertations_. This essay, excellent in itself must be specially
noticed as an exposition by an authoritative disciple.

[364] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 13.

[365] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. v.

[366] _Works_ ('Evidence'), vi. 261.

[367] _Works_ ('Evidence'), vii. 116.

[368] _Ibid._ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 14, etc.; _Ibid._ vi. 260.
In _Ibid._ ('Evidence') vii. 116, 'humanity,' and in 'Logical
Arrangements,' _Ibid._ ii. 290, 'sympathy' appears as a fifth sanction.
Another modification is suggested in _Ibid._ i. 14 _n._

[369] _Ibid._ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 67.

[370] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 96 _n._

[371] See especially _Ibid._ viii. 104, etc.; 253,