09, Bentham began the direct application of his theories to
the constitution; and the final and most elaborate exposition of these
forms the _Constitutional Code_, which was the main work of his later
years. This book excited the warmest admiration of Bentham's
disciples.[435] J. S. Mill speaks of its 'extraordinary power ... of at
once seizing comprehensive principles and scheming out minute details,'
and of its 'surpassing intellectual vigour.' Nor, indeed, will any one
be disposed to deny that it is a singular proof of intellectual
activity, when we remember that it was begun when the author was over
seventy, and that he was still working at eighty-four.[436] In this book
Bentham's peculiarities of style reach their highest development, and it
cannot be recommended as light reading. Had Bentham been a mystical
philosopher, he would, we may conjecture, have achieved a masterpiece of
unintelligibility which all his followers would have extolled as
containing the very essence of his teaching. His method condemned him to
be always intelligible, however crabbed and elaborate. Perhaps, however,
the point which strikes one most is the amazing simple-mindedness of the
whole proceeding. Bentham's light-hearted indifference to the
distinction between paper constitutions and operative rules of conduct
becomes almost pathetic.

Bentham was clearly the victim of a common delusion. If a system will
work, the minutest details can be exhibited. Therefore, it is inferred,
an exhibition of minute detail proves that it will work. Unfortunately,
the philosophers of Laputa would have had no more difficulty in filling
up details than the legislators of England or the United States. When
Bentham had settled in his 'Radical Reform Bill'[437] that the
'voting-box' was to be a double cube of cast-iron, with a slit in the
lid, into which cards two inches by one, white on one side and black on
the other, could be inserted, he must have felt that he had got very
near to actual application: he can picture the whole operation and
nobody can say that the scheme is impracticable for want of working
plans of the machinery. There will, doubtless, be no difficulty in
settling the shape of the boxes, when we have once agreed to have the
ballot. But a discussion of such remote details of Utopia is of
incomparably less real interest than the discussion in the _Rationale of
Evidence_ of points, which, however minute, were occurring every day,
and which wer