e
individual's desire for his own material interests. He became,
therefore, the prophet of letting things alone. That doctrine--whatever
its merits or defects--implies acquiescence in the existing order, and
is radically opposed to a demand for a reconstruction of society. This
is most clearly illustrated by the other thinker Jeremy Bentham.
Bentham, unlike Smith, shared the contempt for history of the absolute
theorists, and was laying down a theory conceived in the spirit of
absolutism which became the creed of the uncompromising political
radicals of the next generation. But it is characteristic that Bentham
was not, during the eighteenth century, a Radical at all. He altogether
repudiated and vigorously denounced the 'Rights of Men' doctrines of
Rousseau and his followers, and regarded the Declaration of
Independence in which they were embodied as a mere hotchpotch of
absurdity. He is determined to be thoroughly empirical--to take men as
he found them. But his utilitarianism supposed that men's views of
happiness and utility were uniform and clear, and that all that was
wanted was to show them the means by which their ends could be reached.
Then, he thought, rulers and subjects would be equally ready to apply
his principles. He fully accepted Adam Smith's theory of
non-interference in economical matters; and his view of philosophy in
the lump was that there was no such thing, only a heap of obsolete
fallacies and superstitions which would be easily dispersed by the
application of a little downright common sense. Bentham's
utilitarianism, again, is congenial to the whole intellectual movement.
His ethical theory was substantially identical with that of Paley--the
most conspicuous writer upon theology of the generation,--and Paley is
as thoroughly empirical in his theology as in his ethics, and makes the
truth of religion essentially a question of historical and scientific
evidence.

It follows that neither in practice nor in speculative questions were
the English thinkers of the time prescient of any coming revolution.
They denounced abuses, but they had regarded abuses as removable
excrescences on a satisfactory system. They were content to appeal to
common sense, and to leave philosophers to wrangle over ultimate
results. They might be, and in fact were, stirring questions which would
lead to far more vital disputes; but for the present they were
unconscious of the future, and content to keep the old machinery goi