e obviously very different qualities. Bentham
gives the result of his classification without the analysis upon which
it depends. He assures us that he has obtained an 'exhaustive' list of
'simple pleasures.' It must be confessed that the list does not commend
itself either as exhaustive or as composed of 'simple pleasures.' He
does not explain the principle of his analysis because he says, it was
of 'too metaphysical a cast,'[390] but he thought it so important that
he published it, edited with considerable modifications by James Mill,
in 1817, as a _Table of the Springs of Action_.[391]

J. S. Mill remarks that this table should be studied by any one who
would understand Bentham's philosophy. Such a study would suggest some
unfavourable conclusions. Bentham seems to have made out his table
without the slightest reference to any previous psychologist. It is
simply constructed to meet the requirements of his legislative theories.
As psychology it would be clearly absurd, especially if taken as giving
the elementary or 'simple' feelings. No one can suppose, for example,
that the pleasures of 'wealth' or 'power' are 'simple' pleasures. The
classes therefore are not really distinct, and they are as far from
being exhaustive. All that can be said for the list is that it gives a
sufficiently long enumeration to call attention from his own point of
view to most of the ordinary pleasures and pains; and contains as much
psychology as he could really turn to account for his purpose.

The omissions with which his greatest disciple charges him are certainly
significant. We find, says Mill, no reference to 'Conscience,'
'Principle,' 'Moral Rectitude,' or 'Moral Duty' among the 'springs of
action,' unless among the synonyms of a 'love of reputation,' or in so
far as 'Conscience' and 'Principle' are sometimes synonymous with the
'religious' motive or the motive of 'sympathy.' So the sense of
'honour,' the love of beauty, and of order, of power (except in the
narrow sense of power over our fellows) and of action in general are all
omitted. We may conjecture what reply Bentham would have made to this
criticism. The omission of the love of beauty and aesthetic pleasures may
surprise us when we remember that Bentham loved music, if he cared
nothing for poetry. But he apparently regarded these as 'complex
pleasures,'[392] and therefore not admissible into his table, if it be
understood as an analysis into the simple pleasures alone. The pl